The balsam groves of the Grandfather mountain : a tale of the western North Carolina mountains : together with information relating to the section and its hotels, also a table showing the height of important mountains, etc.

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UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL

00025330259

This book may be kept out one month unless a recall
notice is sent to you. It must be brought to the North
Carolina Collection (in Wilson Library) for renewal.

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Form No. A-369

THE LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF

NORTH CAROLINA

AT CHAPEL HILL

THE COLLECTION OF
NORTH CAROLINIANA

PRESENTED BY

John L. Sanders

C813
D86b
c. 2

SHEPHERD M. DUGGER.

Frontispiece.

THE

BALSAM GROVES

OF THE

GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN:

A TALE OF THE WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

MOUNTAINS.

TOGETHER WITH

INFORMATION RELATING TO THE SECTION AND ITS

HOTELS, ALSO A TABLE SHOWING THE HEIGHT

OF IMPORTANT MOUNTAINS, ETC.

<

BY

SHEPHERD M. DUGGER.

ILLUSTR.A.TKD.

BANNER ELK :

SHEPHERD M. DUGGER.
1892.

Copyright, 1892, by Shepherd M. Dugger.

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

TO THE LOVERS OF

THE SUBLIME AND THE BEAUTIFUL,

AND ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO HAVE GRASPED MY MOUNTAIN PALM,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED.

THE AUTHOR.

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PREFACE.

As the firm foundation of a house is less at-
tractive than the painted columns and modillions
which it sup2:>orts, so the first chapter of our
story is the stratum of understanding that under-
lies a more beautiful fabric of knowledge. It
locates the scenes in Western North Carolina,
on the great evergreen Grandfather Mountain,
whose highest point is the everlasting corner-
stone of three counties, Watauga, Caldwell, and
Mitchell.

The object of the author has been to supply
the great need of a book that would introduce
to the outside world a section of country which,
until recently, has been almost unknown and
obscure, but nevertheless is rich in soil, replete
with iron ore, and with fine forests of valuable
trees, checkered with rapid, flowing streams of
limpid water, decked with a thousand hills,
fortressed with ponderous mountains tall and
rugged, and pictured with wild and varied land-
scapes.

The writer was cradled in the loving arms of

i* 5

6 PREFACE.

maternal toil in one of the first rude log cabins
constructed in the morning and evening shadows
of the beautiful mountains with which he has
grown up in love, and every scene described is
as familiar to him as w^ere the blooming vines
in which the humming-birds nestled around the
home of his childhood.

'' The Balsam Groves of the Grandfather
Mountain" is a story founded on facts. The
roads, streams, fountains, places, mountains, and
distances are real ; the picture of the character
Rollingbumb will be hailed with delight by
thousands of mountaineers, who will recognize
it as the likeness of a familiar friend ; the de-
scription of the Salmer estate on the banks of
the Linville will touch to tears a prominent
gentleman now residing in the city of Richmond,
Virginia ; and the genuine name William West
Skiles will thrill the hearts of many a North
Carolinian.

" The Western Gate- way to the Highlands,"
following the story, is as fair a representation of
truth as the writer could possibly formulate ; and
" The Hotels in the Land of the Sky" is intended
to be such an unerring guide to health- and pleas-
ure-seekers that strangers will not be disappointed
when they visit the scenes.

The search for the body of Rev. Elisha

PREFACE. 7

Mitchell, D.D., having been written by Hon.
Z. B. Vance, needs no comment.

For the ^' Journal of Andre Michaux" and its
introduction, we are indebted to the American
Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.

Three of the poems, viz., " The Land of the
Sky,'' "The Iron Horse is Coming," and
" Boone," have been furnished by our esteemed
friend, "The Bard of the Highlands;" while
" The Ballad of the Beech" has fallen from the
euphonious quill of " Chuckey Joe," our estima-
ble former associate from the city of Baltimore,
Maryland.

The table of North Carolina elevations has
been collected from heights ascertained and pub-
lished by State and United States officials.

In the ample field which our little volume
discloses, the most luxuriant rambler may range
at large, visiting streams and mountains in end-
less variety and extent, and, after his boldest
excursions, he can only wing his way in imagi-
nation among the splendid objects that are still
before him.

The Author.

INTRODUCTION.

"THE LAND OF THE SKY."

Will you come to Grandfather, " The Land of the

Sky,"
Where a banquet of glory is spread for the eye,
Where scenes of enchantment enravish the soul,
And reason to rapture surrenders control.

Where the mountains do rear their summits above
The storm and the cloud, to the regions of love;
Where waters go dashing down rocky declines.
And the hills are covered with evergreen vines.

Where boastino; musicians are wont to retire

When the bird of the mountain tunes his sweet lyre,

And lends to his melody wings that can fly,

To scatter his song through " The Land of the Sky."

Where fountains are gushing from every hill-side.
All sparkling and cold as a health-giving tide ;
An elixir of life more tempting to sip
Than the cup that presses the Bacchanal's lip.

Where the air is freighted with sweetest perfume
Wafted from the flower when full in its bloom,
And the breezes that float o'er mountain's tall peak
Give back the invalid the rose to his cheek ?

9

10 INTRODUCTION.

Ye seekers of pleasure, oppressed by the heat,
Come to this region, 'tis a pleasant retreat ;
Ye ones that are feeble, why linger and die.
Come up to this beautiful " Land of the Sky."

By a. M. D., the Bard of the Highlands.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTERS I.— T. pages

The Balsam Groves of the Grandfather Mountain — A Story in
Five Brief Chapters, associating the Quaint and Uncultured
Pioneer Mountaineers with the Eefined and Learned of the
City 13-93

CHAPTER YI.

The Western Gate- Way to the Highlands — The Cranberry
Railroad — The Yale of the Watauga — Andrew Johnson —
Thomas A. R. Nelson — The Heroes of King's Mountain —
William G. Brownlow — Andrew Jackson — The Taylor
Brothers, Bob and Alf — Landen C. Haynes — The Stem-
Winder — The Doe River Gorge — Roan Mountain Station
and Cloudland Hotel — The Cranberry Iron-Mines — The
Future of Elizabeth town — A Railroad Poem 94-107

CHAPTER YII.

The Hotels in the Land of the Sky— Elk Park— Banner Elk
— Cranberry Hotel — The Cranberry Mines — Linville — Hax-
lan P. Kelsey's Nursery of Wild Flowers, Forest Trees, etc.
— Eseeola Inn — The Yonahlossee Road, the Grandest Drive
in the South — Grandfather Hotel — ShuU's Mills — Blowing
Rock, the Popular Summer Resort on the Crest of the Blue
Ridge — Boone (the Highest Court-House in North Caro-
lina) described in Elegant Yerse — Yalle Crucis (Yale of
the Cross) 108-143

CHAPTER YIIL

The Journal of Andre Michaux, the French Naturalist, who
travelled in the Mountains of North Carolina in July and
August, 1794, gathering Shrubs, Seeds, and Plants for the

11

12 CONTENTS.

PAGES

Koyal Gardens of Paris — A Brief Sketch of his Life — An Ex-
tract from his Diary, including his Journey to Black Moun-
tain, Roan, Yellow, Grandfather, Hawk-bill, Table Rock,
etc., together with the Names of the Plants he collected:
highly Entertaining to all Persons interested in the History
of Botanical Discovery in America 144-160

A Dictionary or Altitudes showing the Heights of Im-
portant Places and Mountains in Western North Carolina
and East Tennessee 161-174

CHAPTER IX.

The Search for the Body of Rev. Elisha Mitchell, D.D.,
written by Hon. Z. B. Vance — A Dispute between Dr.
Mitchell and Hon. T. L. Clingman as to which of the Two
Gentlemen had been First to determine the Altitude of the
Highest Peak East of the Mississippi River — Dr. Mitchell
resolves to settle the Matter by a Second Measurement and
the AflSdavits of his Former Guides — He is Lost on Black
Mountain — A Ten Days' Search by the Good Citizens —
The Body found in a Pool of Water — Its Removal, Inter-
ment, etc 175-187

THE BALSAM GROVES

OF THE

GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTEE I.

THE GRANDFATHER.

A lowly thatched cottage in humble attire,
With chimney adaub and a broad open fire ;
A string for its latch-key, three strangers within.
And far away moved from the city's loud din.

The lay of my land and tlie lays of my story
are commingled in the zigzag windings of moun-
tain topograj^liy.

The general direction of the Blue Ridge is
from northeast to southwest, but on a sublime
spot in North Carolina it swerves and runs north
for the distance of three miles, and then turns
again by an acute angle towards its terminus in
the cotton-fields of Alabama.

The intelligent reader will now understand
that the part of the Blue Ridge generally spoken
of as the " South Side" here faces the west, and

2 13

14 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

wliat would otherwise have beeu the " Western
Slope" of the great water-shed catches the
golden gleams of the rising sun.

This digression in the backbone of the Appa-
lachians is also characterized by a deep saddle-
like depression called "Linville Gap," in the
centre of which the forest is now broken by a
verdant meadow about a half a mile in length
from east to west, and half as broad.

The pommel of this elegant land-saddle, rising
to the south, forms the beautiful dome of Grand-
father Mountain, five thousand nine hundred and
ninety-six feet above the foam of the sea ; while
the rear of the equestrian fixture rises into the
less elevated but equally pleasing heights of Dun-
vegan, culminating in twin towers of stone man-
tled with ivy and plumed with ferns.

From the beautiful green turf on the eastern
declivity of the mead referred to gushes and
trickles the first streamlets of the Watauga,
which, being of the Indian vernacular, is said
by some to mean " Beautiful River," by others,
" River of Islands," and by still others, *' River
of Reeds."

On the western slope of the sweet-sodded
meadow, and not more than a stone's cast from
the sparkling source of the Watauga, rises the
rippling river of Linville, which took its name

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 15

from a family of that nomenclature who once
occupied its banks.

The Cherokee name for Linville is Eseeola;
and, while those conversant with Indian lore
have not defined the word, it probably had its
origin in the great cataract of that stream, now
designated as '"Linville Falls."

These two crystal rivers are so kindred at
their sources that each could easily be turned
into the other by a ditch ; and yet they flow in
opposite directions and retreat into different
climes, — the Linville passing through the min-
gled waters of the Catawba, the Wateree, and the
Santee to the Atlantic Ocean, while the Watauga
finds its way through the channels of the Hol-
ston, the Tennessee, the Ohio, and the Mississipj)i
to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Watauga, as it rushes and dallies to the
northeast, rumbles and tumbles over ledges and
boulders, under boughs of laurel and pine, re-
ceiving its pellucid tributaries from the green
glades of the Grandfather on the right, and
from the Ginseng and Crawley region, in the
foot-hills of Dunvegan, on the left. At the end
of three precipitous miles from its rise, its united
torrents have lost their leapings and blended
into a sweetly murmuring stream that splits in
twain a gradually widening valley, at the upper

16 THE BALSAM GROVES OF -

end of which once lived a man by the name of
Tom Toddy, who obtained his bread by hus-
bandry, and his meat from the spoils of his gun.
His lone log cabin stood on the left bank of
the " Beautiful River," leaving space between
for a narrow yard and the dim road outside.

One lovely evening in the month of July, 1860,
when Sol was shooting his last golden arrows
across the mountain-tops from his rosy couch
beyond the horizon, two men and a lady, well
mounted on good steeds, called for admittance at
this humble cottage.

Mr. Toddy knew the older gentleman to be
the " Good" William West Skiles, an Episcopa-
lian clergyman who kept a school at Valle Crucis
(Vale of the Cross), ten miles below on the
Watauga.

Of the two whose faces were not familiar in
that quarter, the gentleman was Mr. Leather-
shine, who had been expelled from an institution
of learning in the eastern part of the State, and
afterwards received by Mr. Skiles at Valle
Crucis, because it was supposed that in that
sequestered spot there was no land for the
culture of wild oats.

The beautiful young lady, Miss Lidie Meaks,
was one of the faculty of St. Mary's School, in
the city of Raleigh. She was a medium-sized,

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 17

elegant figure, wearing a neatly fitted travelling
dress of black alpaca. Her raven black hair,
copious both in length and volume and figured
like a deep river rippled by the wind, was parted
in the centre and combed smoothly down, orna-
menting her pink temples with a flowing tracery
that passed round to its modillion windings on
a graceful crown. Her mouth was set with
pearls adorned with elastic rubies and tuned
with minstrel lays, while her nose gracefully
concealed its own umbrage, and her eyes im-
parted a radiant glow to the azure of the sky.
Jewels of plain gold were about her ears and
her tapering strawberry hands, and a golden
chain, attached to a timekeeper of the same
material, sparkled on an elegantly rounded
bosom that was destined to be pushed forward
by sighs, as the reader will in due time observe.
Modest, benevolent, and mild in manners, she
was probably the fairest of North Carolina's
daughters.

The host received his three guests with the
words, " We are poor, but you are welcome to
such as we have." When they had dismounted
and come near the door, Mrs. Toddy apologized
for the size and inconvenience of the domicile by
saying, " Come in, if you can get in." But Mr.
Skiles, knowing the embarrassment that strange

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18 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

company brings upon the culinary labors of a
one-room cabin, replied that they would enjoy
the breezes of the yard, and view the entrancing
beauties of the great evergreen Grandfather, to
whose lofty sum mitt they were going on the
morrow.

In plain view, on the northern slope of the
mountain, was the upright, stupendous profile
of a man carved in rock and plumed with ferns,
and in the furrows of his face, worn by the
lapse of time, clung and crept the most beautiful
flowers and vines. Pointing towards this figure
with his cane, the minister said, '^ See the old
man of the mountains; when that is silvered
with frost or blanched with snow it has the ap-
pearance of great age, and hence the pioneers
called it the Grandfather, and the mountain of
which it is a part Grandfather Mountain."

"Between the old man and the high top,"
said Miss Meaks, " is a beautiful green tower, as
if supported within by a column of stone."

"Methinks," replied the clergyman, "that is
called the Haystack, from its marked resem-
blance to a mound of hay."

The dame, who was preparing supper over
the open fire within, was listening with awe to
the high-flown conversation without, and, as she
drew a shovelful of glowing coals from beneath

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIK. 19

the forestick to put under the oven of bread,
she muttered, " I don't know how to cook for
* big-bugs.' I've got nothin' fit for Equality/
and I wish they'd a-stayed at home."

At this instant the attention of the party was
attracted by a passing hunter, by the name of
Rollingbumb, who, having some business with
Mr. Toddy, stepped into the yard with a great
wild turkey swung under his arm by a withe,
which, passing diagonally up his breast, formed a
cross with the leathern strap of his shot-pouch
that hung on the other side. He was a square-
shouldered man, six feet tall, with a long firelock
rifle on his shoulder, while from beneath his
buckskin moccasins peeped some blades of grass,
as if to complain of being ill-used. His face
was round, with great facilities for a beard,
though, like Julius Caesar, he never wore one.
His high forehead was half obscured by a brim-
less coon-skin cap, having the beautifully ringed
tail of the animal attached to the hinder part,
where it hung down his back, and rolled to and
fro at the will of a gentle breeze. He wore a
Turkey-red blouse, in native parlance, "hunt-
ing-shirt," the same being drawn close about
him by the long corners, which were tied to-
gether in front just below the waistband of his
homespun pants. Such was the development of

20 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

hair about his chest and shoulders, that it grew
up and hung out over his shirt-collar in black
l^rofusion like a fringe. This feature of his
person was so significant that a deaf-mute, who
made himself understood by motioning, told that
RoUingbumb had killed a bear, by indicating
that it was done by the man with a hairy neck.

Mr. Skiles approached the hunter and asked
to see his game, whereupon he placed his thumb
under the withe and, passing it quickly over his
cap, laid the great bird on the ground. The
minister examined the graceful beard, which was
twelve inches in length ; the lady, spreading to
full width the tail, found it ornamented with a
border which, in the arrangement and brilliancy
of its colors, was like a miniature rainbow ; but
Leathershine examined the shot which had en-
tered one side and passed out on the other.

RoUingbumb, who lived but a mile farther
down the Watauga, now equipped himself to
continue his journey homeward; but, before
taking leave, he said pleasantly, in his rude
dialect, " Strangers, what mout yer names be ?'*
Leathershine, speaking quickly for the party,
said in reply, " They mout be Jones, or they
mout be Smith, or they mout be Vance." E,oll-
ingbumb, being a man of native intelligence,
and therefore understanding the import of the

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 21

sarcasm, turned his hawk eyes upon the critic
and said, in a firm voice, **I*m an unlearnt
man ; but if you fool with me, sir, 111 knock
you as flat as a pancake."

Mr. Skiles, being mortified at the conduct of
his student, took the hunter by the hand and
expressed regrets, both for himself and Miss
Meaks, that he had been thus insulted, while
Leathershine sat upon a stump and looked " like
the boy the calf ran over."

A few moments later, supper being-announced,
Mr. Toddy sat at the head of the table and his
wife at the opposite extremity of the small but
hospitable board, with her back towards the
fireplace, which was in the east end of the
cabin. The two more distinguished guests occu-
pied the side next the open door, while Leather-
shine, seated in front of them, cast " a lean and
hungry look" on the bear meat before him.

After a blessing had been asked, the host said,
" Help yourselves ;" and the hostess, in her course
of apologies for the plain repast and the rude
table furniture, said, "Poor folks have poor
ways." The minister assured them that they
should ever be thankful to the Master for such
as their table afforded ; and, indeed, he was right,
for, in addition to the flesh of Bruin, it contained
corn-bread, milk, butter, Irish potatoes, green

22 TEE BALSAM GROVES OF

corn, and that choice variety of honey gathered
from the linden tree.

While the evening meal was being enjoyed
with a hearty relish, the children, three in
number, — George, ten years old, with his younger
brother and sister, — waited by the fire, and sang in
perfect harmony the beautiful lines below, which
their mother had often sung to them as a lullaby.
From the best information we can gather, these
ancient stanzas were composed in " Merry Eng-
land," and transmitted, through successive gen-
erations, from British soldiers who were captured
during the war for independence, and settled in
the new republic after the terms of peace were
concluded.

A sitting one cold winter's nigbt,

A drinking of sweet wine,
A courting of that pretty little Miss

That stole that heart of mine.

She is like some pink or rose

That blooms in the month of June,

Or like some musical instrument
That is newly put in tune.

Oh, fare you well, my dearest dear,

Oh, fare you well for a while ;
I go away, but I'll come back again,

If I go ten thousand miles.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 23

Oh, who will shoe my feet, my dear,

And who will glove my hands ?
Or who will kiss my ruby lips,

When you're in foreign lands ?

Your brother will shoe your feet, my dear,
Your mother will glove your hands ;

And I will kiss your ruby lips
When I return again.

Oh, don't you see that turtle-dove

A flying from vine to vine ?
A mourning the loss of its own true love,

As I shall mourn for mine.

In due time Mrs. Toddy replenished the dishes
with warm food, and, before reoccupying her seat
at the table, she set the ovens away from the
fire, shovelled up the dead coals with which the
supper had been cooked and threw them behind
the back log, just prior to sweeping the hearth.

Subsequently the guests, together with the
family, formed a social circle around the blazing
logs, which were not uncomfortable, and yet not
needed, except to light the conversation, in a
domicile where lamps were not a part of the
furniture.

Some inquiries, made by the strangers, about
the fauna of the country led the host to relate
rare hunting tales of his own experience, of
which we will give only one, as follows : He

24 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

said that several years previous to that time,
while spending a night in the woods of the
Grandfather, he used a venison ham for a pillow,
first placing some dry leaves between it and his
head to protect his cheek from the raw flesh.
When the gloom of midnight had mantled his
couch of moss in darkness and Somnus scarcely
lifted his chest with breathing, he was ousted
by sharp claws passing over his bald scalp. As he
sprang to his feet and grabbed his gun, a panther,
that had now stolen his pillow, screamed forth
the signal of a victorious departure.

It was now time to retire, and the house con-
tained but three beds, all of which were in one
room, the only room, and generally occupied by
the family. But in those days the ladies con-
structed temporary bed-chambers by taking two
large curtains, each about the size of a counter-
pane, and either hanging them from the joists
or supporting them on frames, one along the
side of the bed, and the other at right angles to
it across the foot. These were generally made
of large-flowered calico, and decorated with such
ruffles and laces as the wealth and skill of the
times could employ.

Such luxuriant sleeping fixtures, however,
could be afforded only by the "bon-tons" of
log-house society, who were sometimes classed

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 25

by their jealous inferiors among the "big-
bugs."

Mrs. Toddy was not a "bon-ton," but sbe
rendered one bed private, nevertheless, by hang-
ing up two quilts in the manner that curtains
were hung by those who could afford them.

This sleeping apartment, in the northwest
corner of the cabin, was occupied by four per-
sons, — Miss Meaks and her hostess at the head,
and the two younger children, with their feet in
the opposite direction, at the foot. This eco-
nomical mode of sleeping, by which the taper-
ing ends of human anatomy are fitted together
like the teeth of a shark, is still practised in
some remote neighborhoods around Grandfather
Mountain. •

Another bed, opposite the first, though not so
close in the corner, was on a poorly tenoned 'stead,
which sent its old-fashioned turned posts up to
an extraordinary height, and, being loose in its
mortise joints, had twice wrecked with its occu-
pants and fallen side wise onto the floor. For
this reason a low bed, that was trundled endways
from beneath the one that was concealed by the
curtains, was prepared for Mr. Skiles and his
student. But when the minister was apprized
of the arrangement, he evaded the young man
by inviting Mr. Toddy to share his bed, saying

B 3

26 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

that he wanted to tell his friends that he had
slept with a hunter whose midnight pillow had
been stolen by a panther.

This kind and complimentary invitation being
accepted, the original sleeping plan was disor-
ganized, and Leathershine slept on the perilous
bedstead with little George Toddy.

An hour later, when a stray splinter about the
smouldering fire caught ablaze and cast a glim-
.mering light upon the log joists above, the sleep-
less dame was soliloquizing about the hazardous
bed. '' If Mr. Toddy had slept with George,"
thought she, "he would have turned himself
cautiously on the mattress, and thus saved the
'stead from falling ; but now it would be most
sure to tumble with the young man, in which
event he would think that the cabin had been
overturned by an earthquake, while iier own
chum and the bed-fellow of her husband would
leap from their slumber in fright."

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 27

CHAPTER 11.

HOSPITALITY.

The skies with luminaries shine,

Yet seven thunders roar;
Fatality her works design,

Through cycles evermore.

When George Toddy awoke in the morning,
the sweet-scented breakfast was cooking in the
ovens over the glowing coals on the hearth, and
the great wood fire was sweetly roaring to the
strong suction of the flue above.

The little birds carolling from the trees had
invited the minister from the couch of his morn-
ing dreams; and he had gone from the house
to view the safii'on streamers from the rising
sun, or to see the speckled beauties through the
crystal waters of the Watauga, or to give the
lady of the cottage room and ease of mind.

The young lady, who was now dressing behind
the curtain quilts, soon emerged and washed in
the wooden basin on the block outside the door,
wiped on the flaxen towel by the inside of the
threshold, smoothed her hair with the horn
comb, and, careful to ask for nothing that the

28 TEE BALSAM GROVES OF

cabin might not afford, she only inquired where
she would be least in the way, and then took a
seat in the corner.

It was now past George's time to be up, but
he had been dreadino; to crawl over his new and
sleepy partner who was in front. The head of
the bed which they occupied was towards the
fire, and the door opened back against it. Be-
tween the foot-board and the wall beyond was a
space of about three feet, which gave room for
a tub that sat in the corner.

At length Leathershine awoke and, rubbing
his hollow eyes, gave a sleepy groan. On his
elbow he raised himself and looked wonderingly
at Miss Meaks, who kept her eyes steadily on
the cooking. He now put on his " studying-
cap" to solve the mystery of secret dressing
under the one-room government, and the aper-
ture behind the foot-board was selected as a
place where that task might be successfully per-
formed, provided he could land himself safely
into it. So, leaving one cover on George, he
rolled the rest up lengthwise on the front railing,
leaving between a kind of trough, in which he
lay full length on his back. Pressing his heels
firmly against the straw mattress, and lifting his
body with his hands, he drew himself forward,
his knees going upward like a measuring-worm

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 29

passing over a pair of trousers. One more
measure and his long legs dangled across and
beyond the foot-board.

While in this attitude, George discovered in
the lower part of the under-garment that clothed
the upper half of his person a large round hole,
that seemed to have been made by an accidental
fire in the laundry.

Leathershine was now in a position to pass
safely over into the place by the tub where he
could dress in seclusion ; but when, in the zenith
of his leap, his quick motion, exhilarated by
high hopes of success, threw the hole over the
bed-post, and as he kicked and dangled in the
air, the bed wrecked, and all went thundering
collaterally down to the floor.

Miss Meaks and Mrs. Toddy, thinking that a
tree had fallen on the house, turned quickly and
saw Leathershine sprawling on his face with his
palms extended. Mrs. Toddy, being conversant
with log-cabin etiquette, ran out at the door, and
Miss Meaks, catching on to the style, followed
her example.

" Halloo, here !" exclaimed Leathershine,'' is
that the kind of chinch dens you sleep on?"
said he, referring to the wreck.

" Help me set up the bed," said George, and,
after he had repeated the appeal, the young man

3*

<

30 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

reluctantly assisted in replacing it upon its legs.
The two now passed out of the door, and as they
went towards the laughing river to wash in that
clear, passing medium the ladies were re-entering
the threshold of the cabin ; and when they came
near the hearth they discovered that the shock,
created by the fall of the bed, had thrown from
the chinks above the fire a number of articles,
of which the pegging-awl was in the skillet of
gravy, the hammer in the pan of cabbage, and
the old man's last, being the mould of a very
large foot, had broken through the lid into the
oven of bread. Also, a lot of falling shoe-pegs
had showered so thickly into the gravy and the
cabbage that it was impossible to determine
which one of those articles of food contained
the greatest number of the wooden fastenings.

When the breakfast-table was ready to be oc-
cupied, the coffee-pot, which alone had escaped,
the wreck unharmed, sat on the floor beside Mrs.
Toddy, who reached down and took it by the
handle whenever the cups were to be refilled.
At the close of the repast, each person had left
on his plate a nice little pile of pegs which he
had picked from his teeth while masticating fried
cabbage or bread overspread with gravy.

The host now took his firelock rifle from the
rack, picked his flint, poured fresh powder in the

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNT AIK 31

pan, and then, placing the long hunting-piece
upon his shoulder, started to guide his guests on
the grand climb. While the flowers were yet
cool with the dews of night and the long shad-
ows of the morning were falling towards the west,
the horses were being tied to the trees at the
place where Grandfather Hotel now stands near
Linville Gap.

Here their way was to the left by a rising foot-
path, which was overlmng with drooping violets
and shaded with spreading boughs from ever-
green and deciduous trees. Three beauteous
miles through umbrageous leaves and fragrant
wilds would take them to where morn casts her
first queenly robe upon the mountain-top and
Sol withdraws the last rosy curtain from the
frowning rocks to his ocean bed.

When they had overcome two-thirds of the
precipitous clamber, they came to a little bench-
like spot of earth which was clothed with ferns,
mosses, mitchella, and oxyria, and supj)orting a
mixed growth of black spruce {Abies nigra) and
balsam [Abies Fraseri), whose matted branches
form a beautiful green canopy.

Looking east from this point, the old man of
the mountains presents a bold and imposing fig-
ure, which in the magnitude and perfection of
his features is superior to the Sphinx of the

32 THE BALSAM OROVES OF

Nubian Desert, and always entrances tlie be-
holder into dreams of wonder and admiration.
While Miss Meaks was admiring this mysterious
profile, Leathershine offered her a large rhododen-
dron bloom, which she received and fastened on
her bosom with a pin. The young man, deeming
that she wore it strictly for the sake of the
giver, was seized with a sudden emotion which
seemed to have no hope of reciprocation from a
lady who was so far his superior both in intel-
lectual and moral development.

The party now continuing their journey were
soon confronted by a high, steep rock, which
seemed to cross their way like a wall through
which there is no entrance. At its base, how-
ever, the track turned to the right, and passing
round by ascending curves and zigzags continued
its course towards the toj).

About midway up the cliff is an overhang like
a cornice, below which the rock is perpendicular,
but above this it retreats with the pitch of a
Gothic roof. At the top of the upper half,
rhododendrons annually hang out their scarlet
florescent garments in gay profusion ; but from
the multiple crevices in the perpendicular part
below grow beautiful grasses, ferns, and wild
flowers, always kept green and moist by a little
water escaping from above.

THE SPHYNX OF THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN,

NEAR GRANDFATHER HOTEL.
(from a Photograph by Nat. W. Taylor, Elk Park, N. C.)

Page 32.

THE GRANDFATHER MOVNTAIK. 33

From the base of tliis cliff gushes and sparkles
the coldest perennial spring, isolated from per-
petual snow, in the United States. Its highest
temperature is 42°, and half a pint from its
unpolluted channel quenches the greatest thirst
created by an exhaustive climb.

Our acquaintances were resting at this foun-
tain, and, having no cup, they were drinking from
a concave piece of bark pealed from an oval
knot on a tree, when they saw two men ap-
proaching along the path by which they had
ascended. The eyes of the unknown persons
were steadily fixed upon the ground, for between
the rocks of this particular place are numerous
holes and crevices so dangerous to careless feet
that every step requires investigation.

As they came into a spot of sunshine which
fell through a narrow vista in the trees, the
younger and better dressed of the two turned his
eyes upward to see what part of the sky was
then occupied by the glorious orb, when Miss
Meaks discovered in his face what she thought
to be the familiar features of a long-lost friend.
The beautiful rhododendron bloom that em-
bossed her bosom now rose and fell with a deep
sigh that pushed forward the elegantly rounded
prospect behind it ; but when his brow returned
to the shade of his brim, she doubted her im-

34 THE BALSAM GBOVES OF

pression, and said in silent soliloquy : " Impossi-
ble that he who knows not my love could be
here. No more shall my heart leap and my lips
tremble to the deceitful refraction of light in
woods like these. The warm palm I once re-
fused will never return, alas ! to reclaim me from
my folly. Farewell, good-by, my Charlie; I
shall never see you again until I drink the water
of Lethe, and return from the Elysian fields not
knowing that I ever did you wrong !"

The aj)proaching couple had now come to a
curve in the path which placed between them
and the seated party the lap of a fallen tree
and a little cluster of mountain maple, through
whose tangled brush only glimpses of their
movino; forms could be seen. The one who was
guiding the other now said, in a voice distinctly
audible to those who were listening near, " The
spring is under the big mossy rock before us."

" Ah !" rejoined the traveller, " when we get
there, I will drink to her I once loved, but now
only remember ; and if the water is as icy cold
as you say, it will be a most suitable beverage
for the occasion ; for then I will say, ' Here is
to that cold heart that drove me wandering from
my country ; that stole the sweet sleep from my
midnight pillow and gave me for it insomnia;
the heart that charged me with all the flattery

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN: 35

belonging to the untrue of my sex ; and wliile
this portion from the living fount of Grand-
father shall quench the last smouldering spark
of love for her that lingers in my bosom, may
some messenger of the gods bear her the news
that Charlie was true.' "

36 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAPTEE III.

THE LOVEES.

The rocks that brave the blasts of time

Without a pulse or motion,
Support the forms, reflect the sounds,

That tell the heart's commotion.

The words that close tlie previous chapter
were understood by none of those at the spring
save one, and she had changed her position to
conceal some gracious drops that stole down
over two roses that had thrice flourished and
faded in a few brief moments. After the
stranger had expatiated upon the destitution of
his heart as set forth in the promised health, he
hummed a love-tune, advanced rapidly, and
suddenly emerged from behind the bramble not
more than a rod from Miss Meaks. Here he
raised his eyes, and drew back with shadows of
confidence and doubt displacing each other upon
his face as he tried to determine whether the
form before him was really the object of his
love, or her apparition. Observing on her part
an inclination to rise, he advanced with an ex-
tended hand, and expressed his pleasure and

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 37

surprise in a manner that could be appreciated
only when accompanied by his noble person and
voice.

He was a tall, commanding man, with a grace-
fully flowing moustache, aquiline nose, evenly
set teeth, mobile chin, high forehead, and the
elongated corners of his dark-brown eyes
stretched away under dark brows around fair
temples, from which beautiful black hair re-
treated above his ears.

The words that Miss Meaks uttered in return
for his were only of that social cast which is
characterized by the meeting of friends, but
their confiding tone and feeling delivery in-
spired new confidence in his " heart's attorney ,''
and added fresh fuel to that smouldering spark
which no draught could ever have extinguished.

Introductions now went round, revealing the
fact that the arrivals were Mr. Charlie Clipper-
steel and his guide, Mr. Wiseman, the latter
being from the foot of the great Koan, some
twenty miles to the west. They had camped
the previous night about two miles from the
source of the Linville, on the banks of that
stream, where they had left their blankets and
a light tent.

The six persons now united at the spring
were within the border of one of the most beau-

4

38 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

tiful, tlie most bewildering, and the most ex-
tended evergreen forests in the whole South.
Here the tall and densely growing balsam and
S23ruce extend their branches in united clusters
that support the snows of winter and exclude
the rays of the summer sun. Beneath these are
many ancient trunks of fallen trees which are
completely concealed, and only revealed by a
soft, deep, bright, yellowish green moss growing
over them and following their shapes. Up
through this rich carpet, from their roots in the
decaying wood, grow delicate ferns and young
balsams of a fern's height and higher that wave
and tremble to feeble breezes that stray off from
the stronger ones that moan in the trees above.
This robe of green not only mantles the old logs,
but spreads its soft covering unbroken from one
object to another, hugging the spreading bases
of the trees, and clothing the rising rocks and
sticks that help to form the extending landscape.
This lovely scene extends up and over the moun-
tain, broken only by great cliffs equally beauti-
ful in the flowers of their crags, until it covers
an area as large as the city of New York.
Such were the exquisite beauties along the wind-
ing step-way by which our acquaintances were
about to continue their ascent.

Mr. Skiles and the two country gentlemen

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 39

now led the way, bat were met and detained by
a most wonderful man, while the three younger
persons still lingered at the spring, where
Leathershine was puffing with jealousy and
whiffling around like a " fice in high rye/' The
reunited lovers gave him no recognition, and,
observing that his " cake was dough," he joined
the minister and the guides, who were enter-
tained some distance away by what seemed to
be a resurrected giant of prehistoric ages.

When Clippersteel observed that those in
front were about to advance, he said : " Miss
Lidie, I offer you my hand, as in the days of
yore, to help you up the rocks and steps of a
path which, my guide informs me, leads through
flowery beds and mossy dales like these."

" I accept your offer with thanks, Mr. Charlie ;
but you are not ready to go : you have not
drunk the health you promised," she said, hand-
ing him the concave bark with a smile.

" Pardon me, my friend," said he ; " it cost me
four years in a foreign land to travel to the frigid
zone of my heart, where the snows tliat ended
the summer of love were lighted only by the
flitting meteors of the borealis race. But your
unexpected presence here to-day, which I could
not avoid, has placed that icy region again un-
der the burning sun of the tro|)ics. Already the

40 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

snows have gone, and their place is occupied by
the water lily, perfumed with the spices and the
cloves and spreading its sweet petals upon my
bosom. How can you drive such love as mine
from its mortal habitation and leave my bosom
empty with all but wondering pain ? My heart
is thirsty, and you are its living fountain. Let
me drink and water a desert that will soon flour-
ish with the green bay-tree and the balm of
Gilead."

" O God,'' she cried, " pardon the weakness of
woman," and burying her face in his bosom, her
lachrymal lakes overflowed and anointed his gar-
ments with drops that were to him the myrrh of
the soul. " It is pursuit," she said, " and not
possession, that man enjoys, and now therefore
the tender regard you have for me is ready to
be cremated upon the pyre of my broken spirit,
and nothing but an urn of ashes left to its mem-
ory."

"Never," replied Charlie, "never until God
himself is buried, and the dark marble of ob-
livion erected for his tombstone, shall my per-
son or my angel forsake fair Lidie Meaks."

When Clippersteel had thus vowed his eternal
love and his lady had confessed her devotion,
their friends had gone far out of sight up the
mountain. The gorgon who had lately met

TEE ORANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 41

them and excited their curiosity was a native by
the name of Skipper John Potter. He was
exercising the occupation of gathering balsam
of fir, which, being a much valued medicine, I
will acquaint the reader with its production, as
follows : The resin of the balsam tree {Abies
Fraseri) is carried in the bark, and, when this
becomes overcharged with the aromatic substance,
it deposits its surplus just beneath the surface in
small protuberances called blisters, because they
resemble little bladders caused by fire or over-
work upon the hands. These vary in size from
a mere pimple to a bulk as large as a com-
mon marble, and the balsam is collected by
tapping the larger ones at the bottom with a
knife, and bringing a pressure to bear upon
the top, while the thick fluid runs slowly from
the incision and goes down into a little tin
vessel, whose lip is firmly pressed against the
bark below.

All over Grandfather is a scattered growth of
black spruce {Abies nigra) which the natives
call tamarack. It is so much like the more
abundant balsam that casual observers pass them
for one and the same ; but the resin of the
spruce is carried partly in the wood; is not
medicinal, and does not blister the bark. Also,
the needles of the foliage are flat and of a yel-

4*

42 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

lowish-green cast, while those of the balsam are
round and emerald.

Skipper John Potter was a large man, six feet
and a half tall, and his feet, which were always
bare in summer, were huge and long in propor-
tion. His big bony toes when fairly spread by
his weight were connected near their base by red
membranes like those of a web-footed fowl. The
garments of his person consisted of white home-
woven linen pants a span shorter than his legs ;
a shirt of like material, with a broad turn-down
collar, and a home-spun jean coat of a very
short cut, as if made for the convenience of
wading high water or to overtop the weeds of
the forest. A retreating chin, a head flat on top
and sheltered by a hat plaited of rye straw,
characterized his upper extremity. His long,
straight back was always leaned forward from a
starting-point at his hips. He had evenly set
teeth ; and when he laughed, his mouth spread to
his ears; while two good-humored streaks, one
extending from each corner of the great vocal
orifice, passed round and met on the back of his
head. When he talked, it seemed that the thun-
ders had been endowed with the powers of speech.
He was too wise for a fool and too ignorant to
create an offence. His knowledge was so limited
that the lack of it was by him unmissed. He

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 43

often misunderstood the meaning of words, and
when he attempted to reproduce one that he had
heard a superior use, he generally missed it en-
tirely and got one of similar sound. For in-
stance, when he heard John Smith say that he
was going to have his land transferred, he told
Tom Jones that John Smith was going to have
his land transmogrified.

Those whose admiration had been excited by
Skipper John had prevailed on him to go with
them on the journey ; and as they toiled up the
mountain, while Clippersteel and Miss Meaks
were yet behind, Mr. Skiles placed his hands
upon his hips and, leaning against a tree, ex-
claimed : " Oh, my spine !" when Skipper,
embracing the opportunity to recommend his
medicine, said in tones of thunder : " Ef you'll
take a dost or two of my balsam, you'll have no
spine."

The happy couple behind overtook those in
front at a cliff called Harmon's Kock, because it
gave shelter to Maiden Harmon, a res|)ectable
citizen of Sugar Grove, when on his annual trips
to Grandfather to replenish his brain with in-
spiration and gather balsam for family physic
through the ensuing year. From this point, a
five minutes' walk took them to the top, where
the radius of the entrancing panorama is led on

44 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

by mountains, and hills, and vales, and streams,
and crags, and ravines, until, like the stars that
form the milky way, they lose their identity
and blend into a circle of ethereal blue. So ex-
tended was the view on that beautiful day that
the heavens lost their concave form, and stretched
away over blue domes and fading valleys to a
horizon in the dim distance of the inseparable
land and sky. The beautiful clouds, the ships
of the ethereal sea, in whose electric berths the
giant thunders were sleeping, now sailed only
mountain high over the valleys, presenting a
side view to the tourists ; and, as they caught the
rays of the sun in their rigging or allowed his
beams to pass through between them to the
beautiful earth below, the landscape was leop-
ardized for miles around with a moving robe of
light and shadow.

While the party was admiring the exquisite
beauties of the scene, Clippersteel asked the
more intelligent of his hearers if they had ever
heard of the interesting diary kept by Andre
Michaux when, in the eighteenth century, he
journeyed in the Highlands of North Carolina.
Both Mr. Skiles and Miss Meaks, and even our
acquaintance, Leathershine, answered that they
knew nothing either of that journal or its author.

" Andre Michaux," said Clippersteel, " was sent

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 45

to this country in 1785 by the royal government
of France to collect seeds, shrubs, and trees for the
royal gardens ; and at that time seems to have
had an earnest loyalty. But after the French
revolution broke out he evidently became a very
zealous republican, a true Frenchman, as will ap-
pear from his ardent language upon the spot now
occupied by ourselves ; for thus reads a portion of
the journal," said he, producing a memorandum

'' ' 1794. August 26.— Started for Grandfathei
Mountain, the most elevated of all those which
form the chain of the Alleghanies and the Ap-
palachians.

" ' 1794. August 27.— Eeached the foot of the
hio;hest mountain.

" ' 1794. August 28. — Climbed as far as the
rocks.

'' ' 1794. August 29. — Continued my herbori-
zation.

" ' 1794. August 30. — Climbed to the summit
of the highest mountain of all North America, and
with my companion and guide sang the hymn
of the Marseillaise, and cried, *' Long live America
and the Eepublic of the French! Long live
Liberty! etc."'"*

" But was he not mistaken as to the highest
mountain ?" inquired Mr. Skiles, profoundly.

* See an extract from the journal, beginning on p. 152.

46 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

" Indeed, he was in honest error, for the range
of the E-ockies was not known to him ; and in
those days, when the unknown heights of the
North Carolina mountains were compared by the
effect of their environments upon the aesthetic
mind, or by the length of the rivers that trickle
from their feet, Grandfather was conceded to be
fair Luna's nearest neighbor and friend. In
truth, there can be no better proof of its surpass-
ing beauty, to-day, than the fact that a man of
Michaux's taste gave vent to his greatest enthu-
siasm upon its summit ; for he had travelled in
Persia ; he had seen the Alps, under whose frowns
Caesar battled with the Gauls ; he had journeyed
from the White Mountains of New Hampshire
to the Blacks in North Carolina, and his eyes
had been cultured to the flowers of the king's
garden.''

Just at this instant a buffeting breeze lifted
Skipper's light hat from his crown and gave him
a lively southward race for its recovery; and
every time that one of his big feet went forward,
the heel of the other flew up behind and hit him
on the hip, while his great hands were extended
forward in pursuit of the structure of cereal
straw.

Our two lovers, Lidie and her Charlie, now
descended the northern slope of the mountain a

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 47

short distance to an immense cliff, and occupied
one of the four or five natural steps that round
off to the dangerous brink. This perpendicular
rock, which faces the west, is about four hun-
dred feet high, and in its crags grow ferns, an
wild pinks, and on its brow clusters and blooms
the little evergreen shrub, Leiophyllum buxi-
folium.

Here Lidie found in the recent resignation of
her heart visions of roses blooming about the
door of her future mansion, with humming-birds
nestling in the vines, and the voice of him she
loved falling upon her ears like apples of gold
in the acoustic halls of peace. And how changed
seemed the fortunes of him by her side, who
tut an hour ago was whirling in the storm that
had blown him to despair. Yet all in his bosom
was not peace. Even the narrow rulings of
destiny gave him pain, for, had he not been de-
layed by the rains of a single day, he would
never have won the diadem of his soul. " O
great Jehovah," thought he, " can my happiness
be real, or am I dreaming? If I am in the
deceitful arms of Morpheus, may I never awake
to sustain the regrets of my fancy ; or, if I have
fallen from some high cliff, where, bleeding with
unconscious wounds, my dying hour is sweetened
with these visions, may that hour last, and the

48 TEE BALSAM GROVES OF

red current flow throughout the countless ages of
eternity."

His muse was here broken by a gentle female
voice that said, " What cold wave of silence is
passing over your brain ?"

" I was tracing the wilds through which I
came," was the reply.

These words were the prelude to a low, sweet,
musical conversation, ornamented with smiles
and softened by the tenderest emotions of the
human heart.

No one to eavesdrop was near, and the trem-
bling ferns could never blab the touching story ;
but the envying Echo, who steals the pathos from
all sweet words and returns only the hollow
bones of speech, deserves our notice.

" She was a nymph, but only now a sound,
Yet of her tono-ue no other use was found
Than now she has, which never could be more
Than to repeat what she had heard before.

" This change impatient Juno's anger wrought,
Who, when her Jove she o'er the mountains sought,
Was oft by Echo's tedious tales misled.
Till the shy nymphs to caves and grottos fled.

" Her flesh consumes and moulders with despair,
And all her body's juice is turned to air ;
So wondrous are the effects of restless pain.
That nothing but her voice and bones remain.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 49

"Nay, even the very bones at last are gone,
And metamorphosed to a thoughtless stone ;
Yet still the voice does in the woods survive;
The form's departed, but the sound's alive."

Those conversant with mythology will re-
member that " Echo by chance met Narcissus in
the woods, and so admired his beauty that she
fell in love with him, courted and embraced
him ; but he broke away from her arms and fled.
Narcissus afterwards fell so deeply in love with
his own beauty that the love of himself proved
his ruin. His thirst led him to a fountain,
whose waters were clear and bright as silver ;
and when he stooped to drink he saw his own
image, and gazed at it, insomuch that he fell
passionately in love with it. He continued a
long time admiring this beloved picture-; but at
length the unhappy creature perceived that the
torture he suffered was from the love of his own
self.

" 'My love does vainly on myself return,
And fans the cruel flame with which I burn ;
The thing desir'd I still about me bore,
And too much plenty has confirm'd me poor.
Oh, that I from my much-lov'd self could go;
A strange request, yet would to God 'twere so.'

"In a word, the power of love was greater
than he could resist, so that by degrees he

c d 5

50 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

wasted away and consumed, and at last, by the
favor of the gods, was turned into a daffodil, a
flower called by his own name."

The hapless ghost of Echo now lurked in the
solid face of a cliff that was neighbor to the one
occupied by our lovers, and, envying them be-
cause she were not Lidie and Charlie her long
lost Narcissus, she mimicked their conversation
as follows :

'* Down in yonder lonesome woods is a flowery
bed of green, where I am soon to be tried by the
ordeal of forbearance. Already on that sacred
spot nature's tear-drops are falling thick and
fast ; for, in presence of those on yonder height,
how can I give thee the cold * good-by' that they
will expect, or the w^arm * adieu' they would not
understand ? Oh, gracious Pan, thou god of the
beautiful woods, conceal thy uncomely form by
the spring on our return ; blow the sweet melody
of thy cithern through the trees and entertain
our companions till we pass on to that solemn
shade. There, under the sighing pines on a
mossy carpet kneeling, I will lay the blue- veined
violets of confidence on the roses of my true-
love's promise, and, binding them with the ten-
drils of the woodbine, will leave her to join
her friends in that lonely dell and my guide
to overtake me by the brook of Klonteska."

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 51

" Not SO, Charlie ; if you depart so soon from
the paths I travel, your vows and your actions
will not seem to flow in the same gentle stream."

" Pardon me, my dear Lidie ; my words to you
have always been tuned to the emotions of my
heart, and there is no discord in the sweet chime
of faith and feeling which I now enjoy. Fain
would I have withheld my j)i'omise to meet a
comrade traveller on the great Koan to-mor-
row, could I have foretold the events of to-day.
But the cause of my delay, sent in a note by my
guide, will obtain his pardon, for, on the night
before we clambered together the eternal snows
of Mont Blanc, I dropped into the ventricles of
his sympathizing heart the secret of my wan-
derings. When we beheld the wild flowers
growing so near the glacier {iner de glace) that
they leaned their almost frozen corollas against
the accumulated ice and snow of ages, I said,
^ These delicate blossoms are sickly from the low
temperature which the glacier imparts ; and as
they woo in vain this congealed mass to melt and
warm them into a brighter existence, even so did
I implore the angel of my joys to enter the gate-
ajar of my heart and give me a life of bliss by
her side.' Only yesterday he knew that the
sweet home of love once in my bosom, where all
the happy dreams of life had been cherished,

52 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

was but an empty urn, from whose future every
hope of joy on earth had vanished."

*^ Oh, speak not thus, Charlie ; disturb not the
clear, sweetly flowing river of the present by
turning in a troubled current from the stream
of memory."

Here the conversation was broken by the re-
mainder of the party arriving from the top, and
as Mr. Skiles neared the awe-inspiring brink he
drew back and exclaimed, *' Oh, what a danger-
ous abyss !" Whereupon Skipper John informed
them " that Rollingbumb once killed a bear on
top of that ' abscess,' and, tumbling him over the
brink, all of his bones were broken by the fall."

All were soon seated upon the rock, where they
looked well to the west, and, while talking of the
many attractive objects in that direction, they
determined that, as Mr. Skiles was out on a
week's vacation, they would continue their jour-
ney to Linville Falls, which are from Linville
Gap about eighteen miles.

From the base of the great ]3recipice which they
occupied the mountain continues its descent by
steep declivities, and so precipitous are they that
a person might stand at many points and grasp
the topmost branches of trees that have their
roots in crags far below. A bewildering mile
this rugged green extends, and then scatters and

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 53

terminates in tlie deciduous trees of a fertile
slope that leads down to tlie Linville Valley. Here
the landscape is dotted with the conical tops
of giant hemlocks [Abies Canadensis) towering
above and spreading beneath, so as to partly
obstruct the view of the intervening birch and
completely obscure the undergrowing rhododen-
dron.

Through this tangled mass lay the first j&ve
miles of the narrow road soon to be travelled by
the party on their way to the beautiful cataract.

Retracing their steps to the top, Chppersteel
gave his guide a liberal sum to start, without
further delay, to the Roan with an appropriate
note to his friend.

They now turned upon their heels and took a
last glance at the dim and distant outline that
once bounded the vision of Michaux, who had
long since passed to silence and pathetic dust in
far-off Madagascar.

To the southwest of Grandfather, the great
Blacks — the highest American mountains east of
the Mississippi — present themselves in a line of
blue domes at right angles to the vision, and often
support the clouds that empty their liquid burdens
or gather new lading upon their lofty crests.
The renowned Mitchell's Peak is the highest of
this group, and on its summit the Rev. Elisha

6*

54 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Mitchell, D.D., is buried ; and whether the virgin
snows mantle his grave with their trackless
iin defiles, or seolian breezes whisper between it
and smiling moons, or the serene sunshine steals
the noontide zephyr from the umbrageous firs,
or the great storm king anchors his sable ship
of gloom upon it, and turns loose the guns of
thunder from its fiery portals, he sleeps the same
under the sod of eternal fame.*

From the top of Grandfather almost the
entire northwest is crossed by the long line of
the Clinch Range, through whose depressions, in
beautiful autumn weather, glimpses can be seen
of the more distant mountains in Kentucky and
West Virginia.

To the northeast is White Top, on which
three States — North Carolina, Virginia, and
Tennessee — corner and join. It is a massive
oval mountain, showing the side view of an
oblong bald, with a background of evergreen on
land slightly more elevated than that denuded
of trees.

The most distant mountain seen in the east is
the dim Pilate in Stokes County, North Carolina.
It culminates in a hazy tower of stone, which in

* Beginning on page 176 is a full account of his death,
written by Hon. Z. B. Yance.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 55

shape and proportion, as presented by the visual
angle, is like a large gravestone set in the top
of an Indian mound or a knoll.

Midst the cotton-fields of South Carolina rises
to view the immortal King's Mountain, on whose
summit, October 7, 1780, the gallant Ameri-
cans, under Colonels Campbell and Sevier, killed
and captured the entire British command under
Ferguson.

Near the south end of the Blacks, the beholder
observes the bald of Hickory-Nut Gap, three
miles beyond which is Bound Knob Hotel,
where the already beautiful scenery is greatly
enhanced by the most intricate railroad contriv-
ance in the South.

The reader will understand that I have men-
tioned only a few of

A thousand mountains and a million hills,
With intervening rivers and rills,
And tints that blue and clouds that fly,
Within the scope o' the natural eye.

Our acquaintances, having completed the pan-
orama a second time, now turned their backs
upon the summit with such parting compliments
as "Good-by, Grandfather !" "Farewell, ye sweet
groves ! I will love you when I am far away."
Arriving at the spring, the concave bark, full

56 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

to the brim, was circulated with free polite-
ness ; aud Clippersteel, being the last to drink,
raised it to his lips and said, ^' Here is to De
Leon, who searched for this * fountain of youth,'
which he never found; may his soul be at
peace and the sympathies of all mankind with
his memory."

They soon descended to Linville Gap, and,
after an appropriate parting with the guide from
the Watauga, Mr. Skiles said to Mr. CUpper-
steel, *' Get on my horse ; we will ride and
walk alternately, and neither of us- will be tired
at night." The person thus addressed declined
at first to set the devout man on foot, but be-
ing assured by him that he would not be dis-
comfited by the change, the offer was accepted.
Mr. Skiles, however, was prevailed on to ride
first, and Leathershine having hastened to
mount Miss Meaks, as if he owned that right
by previous attendance, all went down the merry
Linville.

Miss Meaks ventured to ride by Mr. Skiles,
but Leathershine was so goaded with jeal-
ousy, and so anxious to get the advantage of
his formidable rival, that every time the nar-
rowness of the road crowded them into sinde
file, he pressed his horse in by hers and ten-
dered his undying love. In vain did she use

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 57

silent contempt, in vain she changed the conver-
sation.

'' Please, Mr. Clippersteel," said she, " lead
my horse over this difficult road." Delighted
at the opportunity to be of service, he took the
rein, when Leathershine, being close by the
lady's side, placed his open hand beside his
mouth, as if to turn the full force of his breath
upon the object of his love, and leaning quite
over whispered in her ear.

" Get up and ride, Mr. Clippersteel," said the
minister, alighting from his steed.

Charlie first conducted Miss Meaks's horse a
little to the front, Leathershine being immedi-
ately on the opposite side, and then, stepping
back to Mr. Skiles's steed, })laced his foot in the
stirrup.

Leathershine, seeing that he was about to be
superseded by one who seemed to be in more
popular favor, took Miss Meaks's horse by the
rein, and giving his ankle a twist spurred him
in the side, at the same time hurrying his own,
and the two went in a sweeping gallop around a
curve of the road.

" Thar," roared Skipper, " he's got yer gal an'
gone with 'ur."

As Clippersteel lit in the saddle, he heard his
intended say, " Let loose my rein. What do you

68 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

mean?" and being impelled by a sudden feeling
of rescue and revenge, he gave the horse a thud
with his spurless heel, and went thundering down
the road like a tornado, leaving the minister and
Skipper in the desolated country behind.

4

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 59

CHAPTER IV.

TRAPPING A BEAR.

In verse I'll not disclose what did betide, —

The scene's too varied, wild, and warm, and wide.

From the dome of Grandfather, a high arm
leads off, south of west and parallel with the
Linville, for the distance of two miles, and then
drops abruptly down into a deep pass called
Grandmother Gap, beyond which rises Grand-
mother Mountain, the queen-consort of the
reigning Grandfather.

Along the centre of this elegant spur is a suc-
cession of three beautiful cones, which are only
a few feet lower than the highest point and rear
their gray crests through dark mantles of rho-
dodendron and firs.

In the year 1890, a Baltimore bard, who signs
his name " Chuckey Joe," named one of these
peaks — the one nearest the main top — " Yonah-
lossee," which, in the language of the Cherokee
Indians, means " Passing bear." This name was
suggested by the fact that bruin's favorite trail

60 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

crosses the great mountain, througli the depres-
sion, between this height and the next one to-
wards the southwest.

In the fall of the year, when Rollingbumb did
much trapping for bear in this pass, he made his
head-quarters down in the deciduous woods, on
the northern slope of the mountain, in a rock
cavern which had been formed by a large slab
of stone sliding down over a cliff and leaning
up against it, leaving beneath a long chamber
with a triangular opening at each extremity.
When this was occupied by the hunter, he closed
the three-cornered thresholds by building a blaz-
ing fire in one and suspending the skins of
wild beasts in the other.

The rock that formed the shelter, and also the
cliff that extended from either end of the cavern,
were grown over with mosses and lichens, while
clinging here and there in the crevices were
beautiful ferns, orchids, and wild pinks.

Only a few rods away, the east end of the
cliff led down to a hollow, in which great
bowlders, that had come down from higher alti-
tudes, were piled one upon another. Some of
these were carpeted with a soft moss, and the re-
mainder had on top of them an accumulation
of soil that supported wild turnip, dog-tusk
violets, beth, mandrake, leeks, ferns, seneca,

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 61

spikenard, angelica, ginseng, wild-gooseberry
bushes, and many otlier plants and shrubs that
flourished and bloomed in the most brilliant
profusion.

Beneath this rich robe and the bowlders which
it mantled was a subterranean brook, whose in-
visible falls and cascades rumbled like " muffled
drums," as their waters passed on to some crystal
outburst below.

When Rollingbumb passed out from between
the adamantine walls of his sylvan chamber and
concealed his gigantic steel-traps beneath the
leaves and moss of bruin's passway, the grabs at
the ends of the chains were not fastened to im-
movable objects, as might be supposed, because,
in that event, a monstrous bear, when captured,
would have been better able to extricate him-
self than when the great sharp-fanged transitory
prison was allowed to move to the bent of every
overpowering exertion of its captive.

When bruin suddenly finds his paw in steel
shackles, against w^hich all his weapons of car-
nivorous warfare are powerless, he invariably
turns at right angles from his trail, and seldom
goes more than two or three rods before the
grabs become intangled, as seen in the cut, and
he comes to an abrupt halt. But after biting off
all the shrubbery within the length of his cable,

62 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

and turning everything around him topsy-turvy,
he generally disengages himself, and then, snort-
ing with rage and jingling his metallic fetters, he
continues his clumsy flight, making signs that
can be followed as readily as the path of a whirl-
wind, until the grabs catch under a root or over
a bough, and he is hindered as before.

Thus clambering through his painful and pro-
voking prison bounds, he seldom gets more than
a fourth of a mile from his trail, when the
hunter, going to his traps and finding one of them
missing, follows it up, and slays poor bruin in
the manner illustrated.

On the opposite side of the Linville from the
Grandfather is the spring-flowered and autum-
nal tinted Flat-Top Mountain, which also runs
parallel with that beautiful stream, and has a
splendid pinnacle west of the centre. It is
noted for its fertile soil, for the abundance and
variety of its wild herbs, and for its beautiful
groves of oak, chestnut, sugar-maple, and other
deciduous trees.

The last scene of our story occurred at the
point where a line would pass if drawn from
the top of Yonahlossee, through the valley of
the Linville, to the pinnacle of the Flat-Top.

The party had passed the place where Clipper-
steel and his guide had camped the night before,

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 63

and Skipper, liaving been paid to carry tlie tent
and blankets, had tliem rolled up and laid on his
shoulder. The minister gazed after the flying
steeds with a dumfounded face, while Skipper
stood by, w^ith an obelisk of mud on the big toe-
nail of his left foot, and said in an ecstatic voice,
that might have been heard by the man in the
moon, " I'll bet ye a gill of balsam ag'inst a dol-
lar that them fellers '11 fight over that gal, yit."

When Clippersteel passed round the curve
behind which his true love and her captor had
gone, he saw them going at full speed, so far
down a long stretch of road that the laurel hang-
ings seemed to crowd in almost to its closing.
In his hot pursuit, he snatched a branch from a
rhododendron and, larruping the horse with the
broad leaves, the animal leaped forward with
increased alacrity ; and Leathershine, observing
that the management of two horses was un-
equally matched against the skill and speed of
a single rider, dropped the rein, and, continuing
his flight, was soon lost to view under the over-
hanging boughs of the forest road.

Lidie Meaks was an expert in the overland
accomplishment of horseback riding, and would
have prevented this equestrian tornado, but
Leathershine getting the horses under speed
before she apprehended his intentions, all her

64 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

skill was required to keep the saddle and evade
the lowering boughs.

When Leathershine dropped the rein, she
checked the speed of the horse and caracoled in
the road, but her spirits were borne down with
fear lest her Charlie would believe that the fires
of jealousy burning upon the youngster's heart
had been blown by the bellows of her own
bosom. Guided, however, by a clear conscience,
she galloped towards her champion, and when
she met him each saw on the other's face spots
of sunshine and shadow, like those produced on
a harvest-field by the passage of broken clouds.
Comprehending her fears and knowing her in-
nocence, Charlie said, in a tranquil voice, *' Be of
good cheer, my dear Lidie, for in the game of
snatch we are often taken by the one we least
admire."

"Thank you," she said, panting for breath
and regaining a smile; "and believe me," she
continued, " I never saw that fellow until a week
ago ; and although he seemed to be fond of my
company, I never thought of his presuming to
claim my regard until this hour, during which
he has kept my horse crowded into the woods
and my ears inflated with wind."

" Had not the coward fled," said Clippersteel, " I
would have tested the thickness of his cranium."

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 65

" Let me implore you," answered Lidie, " for
the sake of the good man whose pupil he is, that
you treat him as beneath your notice, and I will
stay beyond his ken."

" Hello," shouted Skipper, arriving Avith the
tent on his shoulder and the pyramid of mud on
his toe-nail ; " you've got yer gal back, I see."

Lidie turned her head to conceal the humor-
ous expression which the remark created upon
her visage ; and Charlie answered him with a
look that was half laughter.

Mr. Skiles now inquired after his student, and,
being informed of his flight, he said, solemnly
and reverently, " I have often j)rayed God to
gather his wild oats into the garner of repent-
ance."

After Clippersteel had apologized to the clergy-
man for driving his horse through the nimble
storm of passion's fleet despair, the journey was
continued, and, though the fugitive was often
looked for, onlv the tracks of his horse were seen.

Close beside them and often crossins; their
way was the rippling river of Linville, singing
its song of joy to the youthful Linville Valley,
or murmuring its sweet story to the myriads of
speckled beauties that played on its sparkling
sands. Here it is that the angler casts his rod
over the home of the piscatorial tribe and brings

66 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

forth his elegant prize, fluttering his finny prat-
tle against the rhododendron boughs that hang
like green -spangled awnings over the glassy
pools.

Late in the afternoon, when the green leaves
were rustled by a bracing zephyr, the dim high-
way — so little used that it was partly grown
over with wild herbs — was leading the party
through a forest of large trees with but little
underoTOwth. Here was a lone rhododendron
blooming at the foot of a tall oak, yonder a
cluster of azalia that fired the forest with its
flaming flora.

Suddenly they came to a fence, and going
straight forward, while the road turned to the
left, they passed through a gate into a broad,
beautiful meadow, which was divided into two
nearly equal parts by the pathway that led
through it before them. To the left of this
little meadow passage the mead rolled its green
sward gently down to the Linville Kiver, beyond
which was a hill of laurel and pine that led up
by steeps and land-saddles that wove them-
selves into a more distant prospect of elegant
ridges.

On the opposite side of the grassy track was
a cosey carpet of horizontal turf that led back
to a hill of equal green, which, being a part of

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 67

the same enclosure, swept down and blended
into the level that terminated its descent.

Directly before them, and about the centre
of the large enclosure, arose, as if by magic, an
elegant white mansion. Of its two fronts, one
overlooked the rolling sward that divided it
from the river on the south, while the other
caught in the modillions of its Corinthian entab-
lature the first kisses of the rising sun.

Surroundino- it was a commodious vard, en-
closed by a picket fence of such low structure
that it gave almost a complete view of the pinks,
roses, and other perennial blossoms that adorned
the within.

Two gravelled walks, one leading from each
front through the beautiful flowers, terminated
at as many gates, of wdiich the one on the east
stood ajar to receive those who were about to
enter its portal.

This was the residence of Colonel Salmer,* a
gentleman of fortune, who had swapj)ed the song
of the mockino'-bird in South Carolina for the

* During the war between the States, this mansion
was burned by Colonel Kirk's men when on their raid
to Camp Yance. The property is now owned and occu-
pied by Geo. E. Watkins, formerly of the U. S. Navy,
who has built an elegant dwelling near the spot where
the first one stood.

68 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

nesting place of the snow-bird in the beautiful
land of the sky.

From a window within, tlie lord of the man-
sion recognized Mr. Skiles as the shepherd of
the little flock to which he belonged, and, going
out to meet him, received his hand with a cordial
clasp. The Colonel was then introduced to Mr.
Clippersteel and Miss Meaks, while Skipper
John looked upon the formality with surprise,
and evidently believed it to be some angelic per-
formance, the sanctity of whose mysteries none
but those in close communion with the Deity
could understand.

An inquiry about Leathershine being now in
order, it was ascertained that he had been there
an hour before, but, having learned through
Colonel Salmer that a Mr. Franklin lived near
the falls, he had gone thither to spend the night.

The arrivals were now conducted to seats in
the south 23ortico, which commanded an elegant
view of many objects, the least comely of them
all being the dim road; for here I may say that,
from where we saw it last, it led down to where
the fence made a right angle, and then turning
between that enclosing structure and the river
continued thus until it passed the house.

Skipper being helped to a chair leaned his
stupendous form against one of the supporting

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 69

columns that stood nearest the steps. His great
wide mouth swung open like a fly-trap made of
two clap-boards, and his knees extended quite
up to the sides of his flat head, while resting on
a round of the chair below were two massive feet,
whose hard bottoms, seared by long and severe
exposure, bade everlasting defiance to the chest-
nut-burr and the thorn.

The landlord, thinking that he had seen him
before, scrutinized him with a curious eye, and
only wondered what manner of man had been
brought to his house ; but when his light-hearted
wife tripped through the hall and burst into his
presence, she drew back like an unarmed man
meeting a grizzly on the great solitudes of the
West. Her eyes twinkled beneath a scowl as
she scanned him with a recovering glance. She
then advanced with shy steps, and gave the
minister her hand and received an introduction
to his friends.

By this time Clippersteel had perceived that a
rusty j^air of number sixteen feet, supporting a
form of proportionate size and bearing, would be
unwelcome visitors between the lily-white sheets
of * Mrs. Salmer's sleeping apartments ; and as
soon as he could politely excuse himself he pre-
pared his tent-bearer a resting-place by spreading
the tent below the house, by the laughing river.

70 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Wlien Clipper had placed Skipper securely in
the little pavilion and returned to the portico,
Mr. Skiles and Miss Meaks had been conducted
to their rooms, and Mrs. Salmer had withdrawn
to the culinary department. But the Colonel,
remaining in what Skipper called the '' porti-
kiazer,*' invited his returning guest to a seat, and
asked him how he liked the country.

" It is beautiful indeed," was the answer ; " and
what estimate would you set upon it, if a hun-
dred farms in this valley were prepared and
occupied like yours ?"

'' It would be the Eden of the world, sir, and
the pittance for which the land could now be
bought would scarcely be recognized in the esti-
mation of its value."

" I concur in your opinion ; and I venture to
say further, that the fifteen miles of country that
I have seen this evening, embracing yonder
stream from here to its source, is worth more for
the real comforts of life than ten times its area
elsewhere in the most fertile fields of the South."

" Experience has taught me that your position
is true, and, while my friends call it monkish in
me to have withdrawn from the allurements of
city life to this tranquillizing retreat, I answer
them with the following beautiful story of Cin-
cinnatus :

TEE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 71

" When that model of Roman genius and integ-
rity had received a letter from the senate, asking
him, for the sake of the republic, to return to
the dictatorship, which he had resigned, he re-
plied as follows :

" ' If you could see the nice cabbage that I have
planted to-day, you would never say republic to
me again.' In like manner I say to my friends,
' If you were to drink from the cool, pellucid water
of my spring ; feast on the rich milk from the
fat cattle that graze my fields ; breathe the sweet
air from the Balsam Groves of the Grandfather,
and view their glorious aspect, and see the red
roses that have taken the place of blanched lilies
on the cheeks of my wife and darling boyj you
would never say city to me again.' "

The spring of which the Colonel spoke was
reached by a diagonal path passing through and
beyond the front yard to the right, Avhere the
smoothness of the landscape was broken by some
,rocks that jutted from the slope, and seemed to
wall the subterranean channel through which
the little stream came from some higher source.
Here was the dairy, which was made of hewn
logs neatly joined together and painted white.
Its form was that of an oblong square. The
plates crowning the side walls and the roof sup-
ported by them, passed over and beyond the end

72 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

wall next the hill, forming an extended gable
that sheltered both the spring and the entrance
to the little edifice.

Large slabs of stone walled in the crystal
fountain, and extended their collateral joinings
on the side towards the approach, forming a seat
for two persons.

After a delicious supper of savory dishes, its
elegant serving by the accomplished landlady,
the sending of a portion of the same to Skipper,
who lived in the tent, and the interesting and
varied conversation participated in during the
consumption of the repast, Clippersteel and his
beloved went down to the spring and occupied
the seat above referred to.

The tiny streamlet, trickling from its source
through the apartments of the dairy, chirped
like young birds claiming their mother's pro-
tection at night, as Clippersteel said to his in-
tended, "Look towards those willows by the
rippling stream ; see how the glow-worms and
fire-flies streak and spangle the twilight."

"I was just asking myself," she replied,
" whether or not our lives would end so beauti-
fully as the closing of this day."

."Only those who live after us can tell the
solution of that problem. Useful lives and
beautiful days often have endings quite different

TEE GRANDFATEER MOUNTAIN. 73

from the zeniths of their glory ; and the changes
that take place in the skies of a single clay may
elegantly illustrate the human career. For in-
stance, I have seen the sun burn his way through
twelve hours of ethereal blue, and then set in a
cloud that soon obscured the sky with darkness
and gloom, and the red lightning, darting its
fiery shuttle through the loom of thunder, wove
a curtain that mantled the earth in terror and
death. Then I have seen days that were dark and
dreary, when the bellowing thunder drove the
wild beast to his shelter in the rocks, and the
pelting rain thrown by the angry hand of the
storm demolished the crops of the land and left
the sinewy hands of toil empty with hunger and
pain. Then the clouds drifted away, and Sol
impressed his good-night kisses upon the moun-
tain-tops in token that he would rise from a
saffron bed on the morrow. Again, there has
been many a succession of beautiful days accom-
panied by as many glorious eves, when Venus
and the moon, contesting for the prize of beauty,
hung their golden scale in the west to weigh the
admiration that each received from the world,
and the chestnut sunshine that painted the
blooming fields was broken only by gentle
showers, that struck not the earth with madness,
but gave it a warm kiss, from whose loving

74 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

impress there sprang up a beautiful robe of
green."

" Wliat a 23rofusion of beautiful words you
utter, Charlie. You have painted three pictures
of human life from the cradle to the grave.
May our lot be neither the first nor the second,
but let it be like the continuation of beautiful
days. May our lives be a season of perpetual
sunshine to the heart, when the mind neither
reverts to tire past nor reaches to the future, but
is content with the pleasures of the present;
and if tears must come, may they fall in the
prepared soil and ripen the fruits of the soul ;
and at the end we will not contest for the prize,
but will be content to share alike the glories of
the world to come."

" You have a tenderness about you, my dear
Lidie, and a nobleness of heart which I never
heard expressed before. Your sweet words, drop-
ping like vocal roses from the gardens of lan-
guage, heighten, if possible, the joy of the
thought that you are soon to be mine. Your
silvery accents, to which the trickling streamlet
beside us plays a sweet accompaniment, tell me
to rob life no longer of the bliss for which I
sigh ; and now, as you have no parents' consent
to obtain, no sisters to invite, but only a lone
brother far in the West, I propose that our

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 75

nuptials be performed at the great falls, to-
morrow.''

Lidie, remaining silent for a time, heaved a
sigh, and then said, " I fear that Prudence would
censure my acceptance, for I am in the far-off
mountains, without a wedding garment, or even
a few friends to celebrate the occasion."

" The foaming falls will lend you from their
white spray a queenly robe, the benign woods
will deck it with flowers more gorgeous than the
artist can paint, and the harmonious melody
produced by the combined musical agents of
flood and forest will do honor to the occasion.''

76 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAPTEE V.

THE WEDDING.

The falls that pour their foaming floods,

And set the wind in motion,
That wave the boughs and flaunt the carls

On heads of true devotion,
Could they but sing the song of pain

That's mingled in my story.
Their name would fill the vaulted skies,

And be enrolled in glory.

The beautiful homestead depicted in the last
chapter is now in Mitchell County, but at the
time of our story it was in the county of Wa-
tauga, and more than twenty miles from the
court-house. However, it w^as only eight miles
south of a place that was and is called the " Old
Field of Toe," a muster-ground in use before
the war, where lived a magistrate who was depu-
tized to issue marriage licenses.

When Clippersteel had conducted his lady in
out of the night air from the seat by the spring,
he consulted the landlord for a few moments,
after which he wrote a note to the justice, enclos-

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 77

ing a license-fee, and then passed out and down
towards the tent.

As he tripped down through the lawn with
the peert and nimble spirit of Hymen playing
in his bosom, he sang the following lines :

Lovely Emma, sweet Emma,

Would you think it unkind.
If I were to sit by you

And tell you my mind ?
My mind is to marry,

And never to part ;
The first time I saw you

You wounded my heart.

Chorus.

Oh, her breath smells as sweet

As the dew on the vine ;
God bless you, lovely Emma,

I wish you were mine.

He was now near the little white pavilion,
where Skipper's deep slumbers Avere betokened
by the loud, nocturnal winding of his nasal horn.
His peculiar errand, and the feeling engen-
dered by it, had intensified that inherited super-
stition which dwells even in the bosom of the
wise. Forms of fear gathered in the quiet
willows bv the stream, and the nasal voice of
Skipper sounded like groans from some cavern

7*

78 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

of the earth in which the bones of dead men
were mouldering.

" On the lawny sands and shelves
Trip the peert fairies and the da2:)per elves."

Witli his heart slightly unnerved and danc-
ing to the music of Hymen's lute, Clippersteel
bounded into the tent and stirred the snoring
man from his lethargy.

" Have you ever been to the * Old Fields of
Toe' ? " inquired he.

"Yes, sar," answered Skipper, pressing the
knuckles of his front fingers against his eyes;
"I went thar to the big balluginary " (bat-
talion) " muster."

It was now agreed between Clipper and Skip-
per that, if the latter should have the license in
the tent by daylight on the morrow, he was to
receive, as a partial compensation, enough money
to buy him a new fur hat, which in those days
meant a high stiff hat, plushed with fur on the
outside, and having a crown flat on top.

This was the style of masculine head-gear that
a gentleman had on when a jester accosted him
with the following interrogation :

" Halloo, stranger ; are your cows all dead ? "

" No, sir," replied the man ; " and why do
you ask that question ? "

\

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 79

" Why, sir/' replied the merry-Andrew, " I see
that you have your wife's churn on your head."

In case of a successful trip on the part of
Skipper, he was to receive, also, sufficient money
to purchase himself a pair of boots, of which the
fronts were to be red, from the tops down nearly
to the ankles.

Skipper was soon plodding his way through
the valleys and over the heights, and, as the
moping owl complained to the fair moon that
rolled up the eastern sky, he meditated upon the
future as follows : " I'll stick a feather from the
red rooster's tail in my fur hat, and put my red-
topped boots on the outside of my pants, and go
to see Peggy Sigemore, and Betz Kite, who
kicked me and called me an old balsam climber,
will wish that she had me for a beau."

As these happy thoughts of sudden distinction
passed through his mind, he was so transported
with joy that he answered the hoot of the owl with
the following hymn, which he sang to long metre :

" The squir'l he has a bushy tail,
The possum's tail is bare,
A rabbit has no tail at all,
But a little bit-a-bunch of hair.

" The raccoon up the chestnut-tree,
The possum in the holler,
A purty gal at our house.
As fat as she can waller."

80 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Next morning, when twilight still spread her
dusky pinions over the land, and the moon, hang-
ing just above the western horizon, cast a pale
glare on the saffron-gild from the sun, Clipper-
steel re-entered the tent, where his precursor,
having returned, was again wrapped in the re-
storing arms of Morpheus. In his right hand,
which rested on his brow, was the marriage
document, while around one of his great toes,
at the other extremity of his long person, was
a bandage of green leaves tied on with a string of
hickory bark and bloodied from a wound within.
Seeing that all was well, he left the man for an
hour to his peaceful slumbers, and then returned
with a waiter heavy laden with hot coffee and
wholesome food, and as he entered the tent
Skipper arose, and, extending his hand, said :

" I got 'um, goody ; her's yer licengers."

" And here," said Clippersteel, ^' is your
money," passing him a handful of silver dollars.
Skipper smiled behind his ears, and his short
coat danced up and down to the roaring chuckle
that inflated his ribs.

*' Did a snake bite your toe ?" inquired Clipper-
steel.

" No, sar," replied Skipper ; " I stump' the
nail off 'en it," and, putting his hand in his pant's
pocket, he drew out the great bloody toe armor,

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 81

and, handing it to Clippersteel, said, " Thar it is.
I'll give ye that to remember who brought yer
licengers."

" Thank you. Skipper," was the reply ; " it is
a nice souvenir, and I shall ever keep it among
my most valued treasures." Skipper thought
that he had never before heard a toe-nail called
a " susandear," but, not doubting the authentic-
ity of the word, he adopted it into his vocabu-
lary, and ever afterwards applied the name to
toe-nails that had been knocked off by accident.

The blue sky that adorned the wedding-day
was decked w^ith a bright sun that had risen a
few degrees above the horizon when the party
filed through the gate, by the tent, and turned
down the murmurins: stream. Ridino; in front
was the lone Mr. Skiles. Next in order was the
bride and groom, the latter occupying a horse
procured from a Mr. Dellinger, who was neigh-
bor to the host and hostess. Third in rank was
Mrs. Salmer and the Colonel, who were mounted
on two splendid bays from their own stalls, while
the rear was brought up by a servant riding a
long-eared donkey and bearing on his arm a
large basket of lunch.

Skipper, who had gone in advance, was so elated
by his connection with the affair that he told
every yeoman he met by the way what was
/

82 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

going to take place at the falls ; and these early
settlers, whose amusements were few and far be-
tween, looking upon the outdoor wedding as a
public affair, dropped their ploughs and hoes in
the fields, and putting on their best garments
went towards the scene.

In consequence of the above, Mr. Skiles soon
found an equestrian partner in the person of a
Mr. Buchanan, who had quit the irksome mono-
tone of his plough for the exhilarating pastime
of nuptial festivities.

Before the equestrians reached the falls,
Skipper, whom they had jDassed on the way, had
gathered to his side a company of twenty persons
or more, made uj) of both sexes, in about equal
numbers. The women wore homespun dresses,
which they had made for themselves, by carding,
spinning, and weaving the fleece of the sheep,
and, finally, cutting and fitting the fabric to their
persons. Their head-gear consisted of plain
calico bonnets, while their waists and bosoms were
set about with fillets of red ribbon that flaunted
to the gales of the woods.

Each man was armed with his long fire-
lock rifle, which, when stood upon its breech,
extended from the soles of his feet to the
crown of his head. These were carried as a
means of killino; the abundant deer and other

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 83

game that frequently crossed the roads and
paths.

In the party was a moustaehed man, middle-
aged and handsome, by the name of Clark, who
seemed to have descended from some professional
family that had strayed into the far-off mountains
and retrograded from their former learning and
dignity.

Beside him was his daughter. Miss Ada, a
blooming girl of sweet sixteen, whose form was
cast in neat proportion's mould. Her queenly
hands, tapering and fair as the lily, were
gloved with a pair of red mits of her own knit-
ting, which exposed the ends of the fingers and
the first joints of the thumbs.

Her golden hair was like a shower of primrose
petals falling, and her cheeks were finished with
the artistic touches of Aurora's rosy hand. Her
eyes were like the corolla leaves of the blue-
veined violet, her nose was a posy to her face,
and her pearly teeth sparkled with nectarean
dew. " She was a flower born to blush unseen
and waste its sweetness on the desert air."

In those days it was customary for a gentleman
to propose his escort to a lady in the following
manner. Walking up to her side, he said, " Do
you love chicken ?" which nowadays would be
equivalent to asking if she were a Methodist.

84 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

If she answered " Yes," he then presented his
arm with the words, " Have a wing," whereupon
she put her arm through his. But if the answer
was " No," he was refused, or, in the parlance of
the times, she had " kicked" him. Such scenes
usually occurred in large crowds that were going
the distance of ten miles or more, to or from
church, on the Sabbath day, and the fellow who
got " kicked" was always greatly derided by
most of those who witnessed the chagrin of his
disappointment.

On the present occasion, when all were bound
for the falls, a fellow, with the blood-red top-knot
of an imperial woodpecker in his hat-band,
stepped up to the side of Miss Ada; bijt just as
he would have propounded the Methodist ques-
tion, her father gave him a disapproving glance,
by which his heart failed him, and he passed on
to the side of a bunty girl with a flaxen head and
a frisky air, and, looking her in the face with a
grin, he said, *' Aggie, do you love chicken ?"

*' I don't love roosters," was the pert reply.

The answer beino; new and thorou^'hlv orio-inal,
the fellow was for a time completely dumfounded
for something to say, but finally he got his mouth
off, and said, " Will you let one walk with you
to the wed'en ?"

" Yes, if he don't crow too loud," she replied.

LINVILLE FALLS.

Page 85.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 85

The heterogeneous gathering was now on the
west bank of the river, at the top of the cataract,
where the stream passed transversely over a
saddle of rock, and dropping off, at the lower
skirt, fell the height of a tall tree into a pool of
matchless depth and beauty. But since that time
the ledge has broken down, so that the water
leaps and cascades alternately through a curved
and partly concealed grove, and finally termi-
nates in a clear fall of only about thirty feet, as
seen in the cut.

The pool, however,, which is about fifty yards
wide and twice as long, with the corners slightly
rounded, has lost none of its original beauty,
unless it is in the diminished magnitude of the
white breakers that rufile its dark bosom. The
long way of this beautiful lake is at right
angles to the fall, and its outlet is through a
narrow channel at the east end.

The party, having satiated their sesthetic
vision from the top, now started for a landing at
the bottom, and there never was a wilder way
than theirs. The little track wound, and still
winds, through and under laurel and ivy, around
and over cliffs, and then turns down a slope of
forty-five degrees, and runs as straight as a gun-
barrel for the distance of fifty yards. This
visible section of the path, canopied by the

8

86 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

lapping boiighs of the rhododendron and calmia,
is crossed by many rocks and tree roots, which,
having been divested of soil by clambering feet,
look like the rounds of a long ladder leading
down to the subterranean falls and glittering
stalactites of a cave. At the foot of this shaded
vista, the way turning down the stream to the
right passes up into and down through crevices,
where the overhanging rocks, being of the Meth-
odist persuasion, sprinkle the heads of the pass-
ers-by with clean water. And, indeed, it seems
quite thoughtful in these stones to prepare the
traveller at this point for death, because the next
fifty yards of his path are the most dangerous
that the writer has witnessed in all North Carolina.
Here the south side of the pool is bounded by
a perpendicular rock that walls an unknown
depth of water, and then rises from ten to thirty
feet above its surface ; and we do not exaggerate
in the least, when we say that the track is on
the very brink of this ledge, and in some places
barely w^ide enougli for the feet. The fears of
the tourist are to some extent removed by the
laurel hangings above and a fringe of light
vegetation on the brow of the rock below, but
the latter would not support the weight of a
falling babe, and the former might be missed by
the clutch of one who had lost his footing. If

THE GRAND FATHER MOUNTAIN. 87

ever a lady tumbles over this precipice, she will
most probably be lost, and a gentleman could
save himself only by good swimming.

Our wedding party, now quadrupled by the
country people, followed this hazardous track
to where it spreads into a bench of rock about
as wide as the floor of a bedroom and several
times as long. If we imagine this seat occupied
by a giant of suitable size, his calves will rest
against the perpendicular wall of the pool and
his feet will be washed by its breakers. Before
him, the white torrent pours down into the boil-
ing pot, while immediately on the right of the
foaming cataract rises a great ledge of stone,
from whose summit a Niagara leaper might
make a most beautiful dive into the pool, one
hundred feet below.

This ledge is only the upper end of a long
w^all that extends down the stream and rears its
battlements in front of a low oval knob, in the
rear of which is a scattered growth of dead
and living pine, with scarcely anything beneath
except short bunches of calmia.

The back of our imaginary giant is supported
by the smooth face of a cliff" about thirty feet
high, which breaks at the top into a succession
of ivy-mantled crags that rise almost perpen-
dicularly for several hundred feet, to where they

88 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

are crowned with a grove of Carolina pine [Abies
Caroliniana). While these crags are exceed-
ingly beautiful in elevation, they are also equally
picturesque in their longitudinal extension far
down the stream, where the rocks rear their gray
crests above their evergreen mantles, and, with
their surroundings, blend into a scene as wild
and varied as can be woven of the warp and
woof of mystery and repose.

The country gentlemen, having leaned their
rifles against the cliflP, stood with their women
folks, anxiously awaiting the expected event.
In due time the bride and groom, attended by
Colonel and Mrs. Salmer, were arrayed for mar-
riage.

Their backs were in the neighborhood of the
guns, while their faces were towards the great
pouring column, wliose white wings and boiling
pedestal sent forth a breeze that set all the near
flora and other equally movable objects in
motion, — bush, weed, and flower, as well as
ribbons, tresses, whiskers, and moustaches, and
even the leaves of the minister's book were all
dancing to the wind of the falls. As Mr. Skiles
composed the fluttering pages beneath his thumbs,
he drew so near and spoke so loud, in order to be
heard above the roar of the waters, that his
manner, elsewhere, would have been suitable

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 89

only to those who were partially deaf. The
charming bride, with dove-like eyes, looked
steadily upon the minister ; and, as he proceeded
with the beautiful Episcopal service, there never
was a bliss more wild and warm and boundless
than that which thrilled her heart. " If any
man," said the clergyman, ^' can show just cause
why they may not lawfully be joined together,
let him now speak or else hereafter forever hold
his peace."

To the great surprise of all present, a sneer-
ing voice, on a different key from the thunder-
ing of the falls, was heard to say, " I object."
This came from none other than Leathershine,
who had resolved to avenge his defeat by vexing
the occasion with this obnoxious objection, based,
as we shall see, upon an odious falsehood ; and,
the better to accomplish his design, he had con-
cealed himself in the green of the steeps, so as
to appear at a time when the groom could not
contravene his purpose nor do him violence.

" What is the ground of your objection ?"
inquired the minister.

" She is engaged to me" w^as the reply.

No one can describe the trembling pallor that
seized the person of poor Lidie Meaks. With
eyes full of overflowing fondness, she looked upon
him she loved, as if to say, " I am innocent."

8*

90 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Her chin dropped upon the flowers that adorned
her bosom ; every nerve and muscle of her frame
lost its energy, and she sank at the feet of the
groom, not in the fashion of one who falls under
the influence of excessive excitement, but like
a pure woman borne down by the weight of a
calumny perpetrated upon a warm life that no
sin had ever tarnished.

The copious pool, so near the fainting bride,
was yet so far that not a drop of its pellucid
contents could be had with which to bathe her
brow.

But the groom quickly produced from his
pocket a little bottle of brandy, which he
carried, as a precaution, in case of accidents,
and spreading a portion of its contents over her
pallid face, the signs of restoration soon became
apparent. The country folks had gathered
round like the p)eople of a city rushing to the
scene of an accident, when those at disadvantage
look over the shoulders of those in front to get
a view of the within.

By this time Leathershine had run down the
lake, and was ascending the heights at a point
below, when Clippersteel, darting through the
crowd, snatched a rifle from its leaning-place,
and was aiming a shot that would have de-
spatched the retreating coward, had not Mr.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 91

Clark grabbed the muzzle of the gun and borne
it downward until he had gone out of sight.

A few minutes later the infamous dude
mounted his horse, and, riding directly to
Valle Crucis, packed his trunk and fled before
Mr. Skiles had returned.

The tumult was now ended ; the bride was
able to sit upon a shawl which had been offered
by a good mountain matron ; and an hour later
the marriage service was closed with the follow-
ing prayer :

^' O eternal God, creator and preserver of all
mankind, giver of all spiritual grace, the author
of everlasting life, send thy blessing upon these
thy servants, this man and this w^oman, whom
we bless in thy name ; that, as Isaac and Re-
becca lived, faithfully together, so these persons
may surely perform and keep the vow and
covenant betwixt them made (whereof this ring
given and received is a token and j^ledge), and
may ever remain in perfect love and peace to-
gether, and live according to thy laws, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Hanging on a limb, at the top of the cataract,
was the basket of lunch, and those for whose
comfort it had been prepared, now climbing in
single file for its rich morsels, w^ere followed by
the riflemen, with their ruddy consorts and lasses.

92 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

As the mountaineers were departing for their
homes, Mr. Clark and his daughter accepted a
cordial invitation from Mrs. Salmer to take kmch.

The dinner was taken to a convenient spot,
where a number of large rocks laid round in
circular form, and spread within their circumfer-
ence on the cloths in which it had been folded.

Skipper, having now remained with his older
friends, looked on from a distance, as if uncertain
as to how near the food his welcome extended ;
but when Clippersteel observed his doubtful atti-
tude, he took him by the arm and seated him on
a bowlder, suitable to his size, within the circle.
His valuable service to Mr. Clippersteel and the
wound ujion his great toe having elicited general
sympathy, Mrs. Salmer helped him to the first
round, as she did the rest, and then bade all wait
on themselves.

Under the cloths, in the corner nearest to
Skipper, was a flat rock that so pressed its
bosom against the white covering as to form a
neat little elevation, which was occupied by a
large, highly-flavored cake, of a rich, yellowish
cast, the same being cut from the centre to every
second or third convolution that ornamented its
circumference.

When Skipper had quickly gulped down
what had been given him, he took a piece of

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 93

cake, when Mrs. Salmer, looking upon him
with a degree of allowance, thought, " Poor,
ignorant fellow doesn't know which end of the
meal to begin at."

The Adam's-apple on Skipper's neck had
not played up and down more than twice, when
he seized a second piece of the rich composition,
and then a third ; and the lady in charge, be-
coming alarmed lest none should be left for the
rest, laid a drum-stick on a biscuit, and said, —

"Here, Mr. Potter" (calling his surname),
" have this nice chicken and biscuit."

^'Oh, no," said he; "eat that yerself; this
punkin bread's good enough fur me."

Those who had previously suppressed their
hilarity at Skipper's mistakes were now unable
to conceal their glee, and all burst into such
explosions of laughter that great mouthfuls of
masticated bread and butter flew against the
surrounding rocks like showers of shot from a
fowling-piece.

Mr. Clippersteel settled with his lovely wife
in the city of Paleigh, where he had formerly
resided, and the murmurs heard in that family
were like the voice of a sunlit tide embracing
the tinted shells of the shore in love.

END OP THE STORY.

94 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAPTEE VI.

THE WESTEKN GATE-WAY TO THE HIGHLANDS.

The East Tennessee and "Western North Caro-
lina Railroad, which is more generally known as
the Cranberry Kailroad, leads through one of the
most unique and beautiful regions in America.
The first ten miles of this admirable narrow
gauge, extending from Johnson City, Tennessee,
to Elizabeth town of the same State, lies through
the broad, fertile valley of the lower Watauga,
a country productive in men so eloquent as to
convert the very language of common life into
poetry.

It was in and around this favored spot that
Andrew Johnson, though born in North Caro-
lina, began that political career that crowned
him with the garlands of the nation.

Here was born and reared Thomas A. R.
Nelson, the able jurist, who, soon after the late
rebellion, wrote the prophetic poem on East Ten-
nessee beginning with the following beautiful
lines :

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 95

EAST TENNESSEE.

East Tennessee ! secluded land

Of gentle hills and mountains grand,

Where healthful breezes ever blow,

And coolest springs and rivers flow ;

AYhere yellow wheat and waving corn

Are liberal poured from plenty's horn, —

Land of the valley and the glen.

Of lovely maids and stalwart men ;

Thy gorgeous sunsets well may vie.

In splendor, with Italian sky ;

For, gayest colors deck the clouds.

As night the dying sun enshrouds.

And heaven itself doth wild enfold

Its drapery of blue and gold.

And, pillowed in the rosy air.

The seraphs well might gather there.

And, in the rainbow-tinted west,

Be lulled by their own songs to rest !

Thy bracing winter, genial spring.
The ruddy glow of rapture bring ;
Thy summer's mild and grateful heat.
From sweltering suns gives cool retreat ;
While frosty autumn, full of health,
Fills crib and barn Avith grainy wealth.
And challenges the earth to dress
Its leaves in richer loveliness !

Enchanting land, where nature showers
Her fairest fruits and gaudiest flowers;
Where stately forests wide expand,
Inviting the industrious hand,

96 THE BALSAM GBOVES OF

And all the searching eye can view
Is beautiful and useful, too ;
Who knows thee well, is sure to love,
Where'er his wandering footsteps rove,
And backward ever turns to thee,
With fond, regretful memory.
Feeling his heart impatient burn k

Among thy mountains to return ! <

In this fertile valley Colonels Shelby and
Sevier collected and marshalled the troops with
which they joined Colonel Campbell, of Vir-
ginia, in winning the glorious victory over the
British at King's Mountain.

Here William G. Brownlow, the Fio^htino:
Pastor, preached, and at the same time ran a
forge and a casting-furnace on the Doe Biver,
only a few miles above its confluence with the
Watauga, just below Elizabethtown.

At his forge the blacksmiths purchased a
good quality of wrought-iron, from which they
made the hoes, harrows, and ploughs of the
times ; and from his furnace, which was simply
a primeval manufactory of cooking utensils, the
ladies obtained the long-legged black iron pots
that ornamented the broad, anti-stove hearth-
stones of East Tennessee homes.

On the left bank of the Doe Kiver, within

the corporate limits of Elizabethtown, is an his-
toric sycamore that is destined to catch the eye

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TEE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 97

and receive the touch of thousands of American
citizens. Its branches are as flourishing as the
State in whose soil it grows, and its leaves are
fashioned to the patterns of the dallying nooks
in the rippling stream, to whose joyful song
they dance and tremble. Its beautiful bark,
always brightly spotted by the partial dropping
of its annual incrustations, looks as though it
were mantled in the robes of the leopard. Even
its parting boughs seem to have been passed
through the cased arms of skins from the car-
nivorous beast.

Beneath the umbrageous foliage of this beauti-
ful tree, within the mirthful sound of the laugh-
ing Doe River, where every breeze was sweet
with the odor of neighboring cedars, Andrew
Jackson (Old Hickory) , the royal hater of John
Quincy Adams, held the first Supreme Court ever
convened in the great Commonwealth of Ten-
nessee.

Three miles below the place of the great

soldier's sylvan court were born and raised the

Taylor brothers, Bob and Alf, who, being rival

nominees for Governor of Tennessee in 1886,

reproduced " The War of the Bed and White

Boses." In this political unique, Bob proved

to be of the House of York, even for a second

term, and the House of Lancaster, though de-
^ g 9

98 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

feated for the gubernatorial chair, has since been
twice elected to Congress.

I cannot better continue my description of
the Watauga Valley than by quoting the mag-
nanimous oration which Landen C. Haynes, the
maternal uncle of the Taylor brothers, delivered
under the following circumstances :

At a grand banquet given to members of the
bench and bar, during a session of the Supreme
Court, held in Jackson, Tennessee, soon after the
war between the States, General N. B. Forest
arose and said : " Gentlemen, I propose the health
of the eloquent attorney from East Tennessee"
(turning to Haynes), " a country sometimes called
the God- forsaken."

Mr. Haynes responded as follows :

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, — I plead
guilty to the soft impeachment. I was born in
East Tennessee, on the banks of the Watauga,
which in the Indian vernacular means beautiful
river, and a beautiful river it is. I have stood
upon its banks in my childhood and looked
down through its glassy waters, and have seen
a heaven below, and then looked uj) and beheld
a heaven above, reflecting, like two vast mirrors,
each in the other its moons and planets and
trembling stars.

" Away from its banks of rock and cliff, hem-

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THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 99

lock and laurel, pine and cedar, stretches a vale
back to the distant mountains as beautiful and
as exquisite as any in Italy or Switzerland.

" There stand the great Unaka, the great Roan,
the great Blacks, and the great Smoky Moun-
tains, among the loftiest in America, on whose
summits the clouds gather of their own accord,
even on the brightest day. There I have seen
the great spirit of the storm after noontide go
and take his evening nap in his pavilion of
darkness and of clouds.

" I have then seen him aroused at midnight
as a giant refreshed by slumber and cover the
heavens with gloom and darkness, have seen
him awake the tempest and let loose the red
lightnings that ran along the mountain-tops for
a thousand miles swifter than an eagle's flight in
heaven.

" Then I have seen them stand up and dance,
like angels of light in the clouds, to the music
of that grand organ of nature, whose keys seemed
to have been touched by the fingers of the
Divinity, in the hall of eternity that responded
in notes of thunder resounding through the
universe.

"Then I have seen the darkness drift away
beyond the horizon, and the morn get up from
her saffron bed like a queen, put on her robes

100 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

of liglit, come forth from her palace in the sun,
and * stand tiptoe on the misty mountain-top/
and while Night fled before her glorious face
to his bedchamber at the pole she lighted the
green vale and beautiful river, where I was
born and played in childhood, with a smile of
sunshine.

"Oh, beautiful land of the mountains with
thy sun-painted cliffs, how can I ever forget
thee !''

Mr. Haynes had a countenance as broad and
brilliant as the land of his birth, and a voice as
sweet and musical as Watauga's murmuring tide.
If he had lived in the days of Greek or
Koman triumph, and had displayed his silver-
tongued eloquence at the foot of Helicon or in
the valley of the Tiber, his countrymen would
have dropped a wreath of glory upon his brow
and proclaimed him first of the nation.

It is most probable that he had never seen
the great evergreen Grandfather, through whose
ferny filters trickle the first sparkling stream-
lets of the pellucid river that he immortalized,
for if he had ever beheld its beautiful clouds
shedding their vernal showers upon the myriads
of speckled beauties in the Watauga, the Elk,
and the Linville, or " looping their wind-swung
folds" around the giant arms of the majestic

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 101

balsams high on the mountain-top, he would
have set it as a gem in the exquisite eulogy on
his native land.

The passenger-train that curls its column of
smoke through and beyond the beautiful vales
of the Watauga is called by the quaint but
appropriate nomenclature of the stem-winder,
because, in winding the many graceful curves
of the road where brooks pouring down over
the rocks throw spray in at the windows, and
the passing gales blossom with the sweet odors
of the woods, it bears a marked resemblance to
the tempered steel of a time-keeper in playing
its part within the glittering gold and among
the intricate movements of the best jewelled
stem-winder in the pocket of the millionaire.

Six miles above Elizabethtown, the stem-
winder stops at Allentown, a handsome station,
where the " Spring Lake Inn" and the Hampton
Hotel are situated beside a clear and unusually
voluminous limestone spring, which is the nearest
calcareous neighbor to the free-stone fountains
of the Highlands.

One mile beyond Allentown, the iron steed
dashes through one of the five tunnels on the
line, and bursts into a grand canyon called the
Gorge. Here the Doe Eiver, a rumbling, tum-
bling, rollicking, frolicking stream, in dancing and

9*

102 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

dallying along tlie countless ages of time, has
cut its way down through the Azoic rocks to
the depth of a tliousand feet, and so nearly
perpendicular are the walls on either side that
a suspension bridge could be constructed, with
usual decorum, across the chasm at the top.
Through this unique and beautiful gate-way to
the Highlands of Western North Carolina, the
road-bed has been prepared, for the distance of
four miles, by cutting a niche out of the rocks,
about fifty feet above the river, on the left
bank ; and as the stem-winder " wheels its dron-
ing flight" through crag and canyon, by rushing
ra]3ids and foaming falls, through bracing air
and views sublime, it passes by great towers and
walls, and temples, and cathedrals, and castles
" of stone, ornamented with spires and domes and
turrets and battlements, and enriched with a
profusion of wild pinks that grow in the crevices
and impart a glowing harmony to the gray
columns and 23ilasters and obelisks and pinnacles
and porticos of stone behind them. Passing
this colossal structure of Nature's masonry, the
stem-winder follows the rumbling waters of the
Doe to Roan Mountain station and hotel, which
are connected by a hack line and a telephone
with Cloudland Hotel, twelve miles away on the
bald of the great E-oan Mountain.

PARDEE'S POINT, IN DOE RIVER GORGE.
(from a Photogras>h by Nat. W. Taylor, Elk Park, N. C.)

Page I02.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 103

Leaving the banks of the Doe, the train winds
through the alternating valleys and ravines of
Shell Creek, crossing the State line and con-
tinuing two miles beyond to its terminus, where
the Cranberry Iron and Coal Co. are operating
the greatest mine of magnetic iron ore this side of
cold, piney Sweden. Such are the agencies that
have driven the crouching panther from the
Highlands, and the rhododendron blooms that
waved over his lair now drop their crimson 23etals
upon the heads of fair men and maidens who sit
beneath the shades and woo the sweet flowers to
the rescue of their love-stricken hearts.

Returning to the banks of the Watauga, we
call attention to the fact that the Bristol, Eliza-
bethtown, and North Carolina Kailroad will soon
be completed to the last-named town, which
renowned and historic spot has recently been
purchased as the site for a co-operative manu-
facturing city. Among its owners are a num-
ber of the wealthiest and most influential gentle-
men in America, who look forward to the early
extension of railroads from Elizabethtown and
Johnson City, across the Blue Bidge, to connect
with the Bichmond and Danville system and
other lines of the Atlantic slope.

The completion of the unfinished link in
the Charleston, Cincinnati, and Chicago between

104 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Johnson City, Tennessee, and Marion, North
Carolina, is anticipated with impatient interest ;
and the Cranberry narrow gauge is on the eve
of being extended across the fertile Valley of
the Linville, and then along beneath the frown-
ing rocks of the Grandfather to Lenoir ; while
the Co-operative Town Company dwell with
especial emphasis upon the continuation of the
Bristol, Elizabethtown, and North Carolina up
the Watauga Valley, through the region of
Mountain City, to the top of the great water-
shed, and thence down to the present terminus
of the Yadkin Valley road at Wilkesboro.

With implicit faith in the early building of one
or all of these connections, our friend, the Bard
of the Highland, has presented us with the fol-
lowing beautiful production of his genius :

THE lEON HOESE IS COMmG.

There's news on the wind, 'tis wafted from the shore

Like a faint voice from the ocean's mighty roar;

The iron horse is coming, oh, tell it once more.

On the Atlantic coast the iron horse will start,

And dash through the mountains like a winged dart ;

Throufi^h the old ISTorth State and the State of Tennessee

The iron horse will travel and travel in glee.

Yes, the iron horse is coming, and that's good news ;

It will cure hard times and drive away the blues.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 105

Awake from your slumbers, ye good mountaineers,
You'll hear the mighty whistle in two or three years ;
Ring the bells of welcome, let your cheers go round.
Our wealth will come forth, our wealth is in the ground.

What a resurrection of ores to the sight ;
And our gems will sparkle like stars of the night.
And joy will kindle in the good farmer's eye
When he can buy so cheap and can sell so high.
His cabbage, potatoes, his turnips and fruits.
His bacon, beef, butter and milk from his brutes,
His cider and wine, and his crout in his kegs,
His honey and feathers and poultry and eggs,
And everything he grows, his grain and his hay,
Will bring good prices, and prices that will pay ;
And everything he buys from a railroad store
Will come much lower than he ever bought before :
His clothing and coffee, his sugar and flour,
Will all testify to the iron horse's power.
And all the day long, through the hot summer days,
While out in the field, 'neath the sun's burning rays.
The farmer will whistle the iron horse's praise.
And in front of his door the bird in her bower
Will tune her sweet lays to the iron horse's power;
How the merchant will smile when the railroad comes
And brings cheaper goods to his customers' homes;
When he gets connected with the business world,
He'll hang out his sign like a flag unfurled :
" Come one and all, great and small, rich and poor,
Everything is first-class in my railroad store."
And the laboring man, the abused of the earth,
By cheap labor kept poor, and poor from his birth,
The only man that knows what money is worth.
Can rejoice when he hears the iron horse neigh :

106 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

" One dollar instead of fifty cents a day."

The iron horse is coming, he's a steed that's fleet,

He'll trample hard times 'neath his great iron feet.

Methiiiks I hear the train dashing o'er the plain,

Eoaring and thundering like the mighty main.

On through Carolina's undulating hills,

Xow through the deep cuts and now along the fills,

Across each swamp and river by trestle or bridge.

And on to the foot-hills of the great Blue Eidge,

And panting and climbing and leaping its spurs,

And fretting and foaming in his cast-iron gears.

And snorting and groaning his burden to bear,

And prancing and puffing and snuffing the air.

At length he reaches the top of the mountain.

And slakes his thirst in a cold crystal fountain ;

Nor ever did steed of iron or of flesh

Quaff water from a stream more cooling and fresh ;

Nor ever did hills that echoed to thunder,

Present more romance and grandeur and wonder.

On dashes the steed as fast as a pigeon

Through a rugged, rich, and beautiful region ;

And the passengers glance with wonder-bleared eye

At the hill-strewn landscapes, as backward they fly,

That deck so profusely this land of the sky.

The steed dashes on with thrilling locomotion,

Piling up mountains 'tween him and the ocean ;

And the breath from his nostrils rolls back on the air,

And hangs like a cloud quite pensively there.

Or shoots up a column all curling and black.

That winds like a serpent far over the track.

On dashes the steed as fast as he can run.

His head-light gleaming like the noonday sun.

Through forests unmeasured, trees without number,

Millions of trees made a-purpose for lumber.

TEE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIK 107

And now the iron wheels clank and clatter and roar

And press the rich beds of East Tennessee ore.

In the county of Johnson, where the steed now runs,

The hills are swollen with millions of tons.

What wealth has slept since the dawn of creation,

Awaiting the hand of this generation!

Awake from your slumbers, ye good mountaineers,

You'll hear the mighty whistle in two or three years ',

Eing the bells of welcome, let your cheers go round,

Our wealth will come forth, our wealth is in the ground.

RICHMOND AND DANyiLLE

RAILROAD.

-m

THE GREAT THROUGH CAR LINE

BETWEEN THE

NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST,

AND

SOUTH-WEST.

The Highest Standard of Passenger Service.
Through Trains, Quick Time, and Sure Connections

TO AND FROM EASTERN CITIES

AND

"THE LAND OF THE SKY."

The Scenery in the Mountains of Western North Carolina is
Unsurpassed. Highest Peaks east of the Rocky Mountains. They
have a Ruggedness and Grandeur not possessed by any other
Mountains in the Eastern States.

108

The Greatest Summer and Winter

Resorts

to be found in the Union are in this section of
''THK OLD NORXH STAXK."

Ample Hotel Accommodations and every Convenience and Luxury
are to be had at the Various Resorts along the Lines of the RICH-
MOND AND DANVILLE RAILROAD, and are easily reached.

SOLID PULLMAN TRAINS

AND THROUGH PULLMAN CARS TO AND FROM

ALL RESORT POINTS.

The Great V/ashington and South-Western Vestibuled Limited
is the Most Magnificent Train, and via the SHORTEST ROUTE
FROM THE GREAT NORTH TO THE NEVv^ SOUTH.

See that your Tickets read via the

NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR FAST TIME.

For full information in regard to Schedules, Maps, Time-Tables,
etc., apply to any Agent of the System, or address

JAS. L. TAYLOR, G.P.A., W. A. TURK, A.G.P.A.

ATLANTA, GA. CHARLOTTE, N.C.

W. H. GREEN, G.A/., SOL. HAAS, T.M.,

109

ATLANTA, GA. ATLANTA, GA.

110 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAPTEE VII.

THE HOTELS IN THE LAND OF THE SKY.

One mile below Cranberry on the narrow-
gauge is the thriving town of Elk Park, where
scores of health- and pleasure-seekers dismount
from the iron horse. Here comfortable board
can be had at the Banner House, the Bowers
House, or the Walsh Hotel, for one dollar a day,
with reasonable reductions for longer periods.
But if more costly fare is desired it will be found
at the elegant cottage of Nat. W. Taylor, brother
to Robert L. Taylor, ex-governor of Tennessee.
This gentleman not only keej)s first-class ac-
commodations, but, being a professional artist and
photographer, he invites his guest to patronage
in that line, and offers for sale a stock of beauti-
ful views photographed from the most interesting
mountain objects.

Two miles south of Elk Park is the summit
of Hump Mountain, five thousand five hundred
and forty-one feet above the level of the sea,

THE GEAKDFATHER MOUNTAIN. HI

while the same distance north of the town the
beautiful Falls of Elk have a clear leap of sixty-
three feet into a deep, seething caldron.

Eight miles northeast from our present rail-
road landing, by way of a new and beautiful
mountain road, is, —

Fair Banner Elk, tlie Highland flower,
With warbling birds in many a bower,
And valleys sweet with new mown hay,
And pastured hills where cattle lay.

Its laughing cascades foaming white.
Its speckled trout in- waters bright ;
O'er dallying pools and dancing nooks
The sportsman plies the feathered hooks.

Here are no hotels, but at the farm-house of
Mrs. Patsey H. Witmore, the combined store-
house and dwelling of R. L. Lowe, Esq., and at
the author's Shonnyhaw cottage, tourists are in-
vited to spring beds, and to tables heavily laden
with such food as roasted mutton, yeast bread,
biscuits and corn bread, unskimmed sweet milk,
and sour milk just from the churn, coffee, fried
or boiled swine's ham, buckwheat cakes and
maple syrup, fresh butter, chicken and eggs,
vegetables, honey, jellies, jams, preserves, pickles,
speckled trout, and, last of all, turnip salad, of
which the Irishman said " that he had come all

112 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

the way from ' Auld Ireland/ just to eat broad
grass like a cow."

For board on Banner Elk tlie terms are one
<lollar a day, six dollars a week, and twenty
dollars a month.

Standing around this sequestered valley in re-
posing grandeur, and representing the corners
of a triangle, are three mountain princes, viz.,
the Hanging E-ock, the Sugar, and the Beech, all
of which are more than five thousand feet above
the level of the sea.

The overtopping Beech is crowned with an
imposing pinnacle, w^hich, being cleft in the cen-
tre, presents a double front, of which one side is
called the Boc's Egg, because it is supposed to
resemble the egg of the roc, the monstrous bird
of Arabian mythology.

Looking half a mile west from this hard-
shelled production of the mythical species, the
tall Bider's Bock rises before the observer, and
presents him with the exquisite picture of a
horse and rider embroidered of ferns and lichens
upon its face.

The entire mountain, with his cliffs and pinna-
cles, faces the south, and ever casts his adamant-
ine smile upon the emerald valley of Banner
Elk and its tributary, shy Shonnyhaw ; while,
looking still beyond through the vista between

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 113

the Sugar and the Hanging Rock, he beholds
the great evergreen Grandfather bulging his
cap of clouds to the sun.

From the very summit of the Beech, the land
sloping northward was rendered bald in 1890
by the use of two axes, of which one was wielded
by the writer of this little volume, while the
other was manned by a Baltimore bard, who
signs his name " Chuckey Joe."

The spot thus divested of trees is grown over
with an indigenous grass of such a profuse and
lustrous green that the sight-seer can scarcely
refrain from lying down and rolling on the cosey
carpet beneath him.

So majestic are the rocks of the Beech, and
so glorious the panorama which they command,
that Chuckey Joe, who named the Bider's Bock
and the Boc's Egg, and assisted in creating the
Bald of the Beech, has seen fit to poetize as
follows :

THE BALLAD OF THE "BEECH."

DEDICATED TO THE LITTLE " BALD" OF THE BIG " BEECH,"
BY HUGGER AND DUGGER, SPONSORS.

{The little ''Bald'' was born August 23, 1890.)

That I'm as " old as the hills,'' every one must confess ;
Being a " mountain," you see, I could hardly be less;
But, somehow, yonder " Grandfather," say what I will,
In spite of my " ages," " gets the age on me,"still.
A 10*

114 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Yet we grew up together : when the Record begins,
Some score thousand years back, we were brothers and

twins ;
He stuck to the " Blue Ridge," and I to the " Stone ;"
And if he claims the "Linville," why the "Elk" is my

own.

True legions of " Low-landers" pray at Ms shrine,
Whilst only rare Ramblers offer incense at mine ;
Yet these " Summer-ers" claim to be civilized folk
With Vi passion for "peaks," but that's surely a joke;
For if "culture" they long for in fact, not in fun, —
Let them note, — I've ten farms to the Grandfather's one;
And if corn, clover, and cabbages, buckwheat and beans,
Ain't "culture," just explain what the hull of it means?

But as I said sooner, "Inconsistency's cheap!"

If you've ever been too oV d yourself — don't laugh at sheep.

You-uns claim culture, and polish, and taste, and sich

" stuff,"
Yet you worship the " G-randad" for being a "rough."
I can't for the life of me (and my life is long),
See why the " Grandfather" should have the whole

throng
Lauding " Him" to the skies, whilst the " Beech," though

begotten
In Brotherhood with him, seems almost forgotten.

I've been puzzling my pate ('tis no soft one, you bet !),
Why the " G. F.," you see, should become such a pet ;
No doubt " Kelsey's curves" up his slopes air big help,
But if he is a " lion," the " Big Beech" is no whelp.
If he has his " Balsams," I have samples as good
As on Yonahlossee's top ever have stood ;

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 115

And Ms " Knuckles" could never knock down my " Eoc's

Egg,"
Kor his " Raven Rock" lower my " Rider" one peg.

That a Mountain his own " faults" should oft overlook

Is quite logical (vid. any Geo-logical book) ;

Nor could you expect any " Bump" of my size

To " lie low" when even " The Hump," humps Ms-self

for the prize.
I can play a " hlxiff game" as my " pinnacles" tell,
An& fifty -five hundred feet is (I swear it) a " swell ;"
But what sot me back when the "Boss Bumps" were

called,
Was, they thought me a mere " Boy" because I warn't

" bald."

There are acres of much bigger halds, say the Finical,
But I'm sure you'd discover " fine points" on my " Pin-
nacle ;"
Gray crags, with a few laurel clumps, or an ash ;
And belted round these, like an emerald sash,
A greensward, where my choicest " Rhododendron

Yaseyi"
Can flaunt their fair flowers to the sun and the sky :
And "Rain-roosts" I have, too; — jow could hardly find

better ones
To keep dry your " dry goods" if you woii't all be
"wetter 'uns."

IsTow I hope you-uns Hll visit my lately born " Bald :"
It 'tain't like the " Blood Camp's," a mere " fire scall'd,"
Nor like "the Humps" "deadening."

Though thickening, you saw
Leagues of leafage from "Poga" to shy "Shonnyhaw"

116 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

In woodlands extending ; just — drop up ; let your eyes
See my bonny bare " Bald" spread itself to the skies,
Like a garden from Eden just recently snatched,
And with all of the " latest improvements attached."

THE PANOEAMA. ^

See ! from " cloud-land's" white walls on the dark " Eainy

Eoan"
To where the "Black's" "Mitchell" as monarch en-
throne ;
Nay, further, — to where " Craggy's" far tilted crest,
And dim " Yeates" and domed " Ogle" shine pale in the

west.
From " Chimney-top" over fair Tennessee's lines
To where " White Top's" long " bald" like a scimitar

shines ;
From " Iron," less distant, rising softly by inches
Beyond Abingdon look where the gate of the " Clinch"

is!
From the "Snake" and the "Elk," and the "Bluff's"

dimmer blue,
To " Blowing Eock's" crags, and Boone almost in view I
Mark the " Devil's Claw" under the bold " Hanging

EOCK,"

And the " Cloven Cliff's" crags, that seem almost to
mock

The " OrRANDFATHER," jutting up Under his "Nose."

(Ah! when he "catches cold," you can look out for
"blows!")

Then see "Flat Top," "Sugar's" bluff, and the "Nee-
dles" not far.

And the "Table's" dark cliff and the "Hawkbill's"
dim scar. •

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 117

Tender's "Jonas' Bald Ground," and the "North Cove"

slopes there
With his marble cliffs under the wild, "Winding Stair."
Far distant, lifting southward his faded blue cap.
See "Old Bald," once the "Shaky" of "Hickory-Nut

Gap ;"
Nay, — even beyond these, blue as some distant Zion,
Mark " Saludas" soft slopes 'neath the blue tent of

" Tryon."
From the "Clinch" to where " Chuckey" and "Tennes-
see" meet,
There lies a broad, beautiful world at your feet ;
Extending from where eastward rises "Pilot's" dim crest
To the " CuMBERLANDs" fading afar in the west.
No fairer land surely than this, where the hills
Are feathered with forests and braided with rills !
See ! under us " Shonnyhaw" dances and dallies.
And " Elk" in white arms holds a score of my valleys.
Oh, come ! from my laurel-crown'd throne, feast your eyes
On the greenest of lands, 'neath the bluest of skies!
Where " Enohla's" white cascades flash out like a mist,
There are blooms to be cull'd — there are maids to be

kissed :
And " Banner's Elk" bravely and broadly extends
A summery Welcome to hosts of warm friends .

Chuckey Joe.

"CHEEOKEE CHIPS."

BY THE "pathfinder."

Seenoyahs, or the Mountains of Night, are "The

Blacks."
The Great Estetoe Mountain is in the Vulgate^ " Bright's

Yaller."

118 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Ej^unayrock (Panther Skin, Tusc.) is White Top,
Yirga.

YoNAHLOssEE (the Passing Bear) is the Grandfather
Mountain.

Yanassa (Bnffalo) is the Iron Mountain Eange, long
and unlovely.

The Wahaw are the South Mountains, south of Mor-
ganton. North Carolina.

Chotah is the " Bluff of the Peak" or Cloven Cliff.

"Wanteska (Level Land) is Flat Top of Linville.

Kullahsayja (Sugar) is Sugar Mountain of Banner's
Elk, North Carolina.

Zehleeka is the French Broad Eiver.

Yonawayah (Bear Paw) is the Hanging Eock of Ban-
ner's Elk.

Klonteska (Pheasant) is Big Beech of Banner's Elk.

The Sakonegas (Blue) is the Blue Eidge Eange.

Skolanetta is the Hump, near Cranberry, North Caro-
lina.

Ottaray is the Cherokee (now obsolete) name of old for
their Highlands in North Carolina.

The EsEEOLA Mountains, follow the left bank of the
Linville Eiver, south of Linville City, ending with
Short Off, below the Table.

Chuckey Joe.

CRANBEKRY.

Between Elk Park and tlie Cranberry mines
the stem-winder stops to let passengers oflf at
the Cranberry Hotel, a perfect gem of a house,
which Mr. Wallace Hahn, the proprietor, keeps
in the style of a delightful country home.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 119

Along its approaches and around its copious
verandas the most beautiful flowers are clumped
and clustered upon a verdant lawn, while the
commodious apartments within are furnished
with every modern convenience, and the dining-
hall is rich with the aromatic contents of plenty's
horn.

At the mines you can get a square meal for
fifty cents, and a day's board and lodging for one
dollar and fifty cents, at the Mitchell House.

Persons who stop at Cranberry to see the inex-
haustible deposit of magnetic ore and its sur-
rounding objects of interest, will lose the jewel
of their sojourn if they fail to visit Colonel C.
H. Nimson's Bellevue farm, three miles distant,
on top of Fork Mountain, where the si^lendor of
the prospect is all that the name suggests, —

"And harmless shepherds tune their pipes to love,
And Amaryllis sounds in ev'ry grove."

LINVILLE.

Mr. S. T. Kelsey, the general manager of the
Linville Improvement Co., is at once a philoso-
pher and engineer, a botanist and a scholar.
His neatly-proportioned person is a little smaller
than that of the average man, and from beneath
his brim peeps, in cunning brilliancy, a pair of

120 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

small, keen, penetrating, expressive blue eyes,
which everybody takes for black until they are
otherwise informed.

His long beard, that would do honor to the
days of Moses, falling gracefully upon his bosom,
is clean and white as the snow. His hair is of a
solid, rich, glossy cream color, while a few black
streamers in his moustache, interspersing the
white, are his only souvenir filaments of middle
life.

These hoary locks, on a head of only sixty
summers, evince a life of the most stirring ac-
tivity both in body and mind, and still he pos-
sesses the sprightliness and energy of the most
enterprising man of thirty.

This gentleman has placed such a sterling
stamp upon his section of the country by laying
out and building the most elegant drives in the
Highlands, that Chuckey Joe has passed upon
him the most magnanimous pun we ever heard,
— he calls him " The Colossus of Rhodes."

One of Mr. Kelsey's roads, leading from Cran-
berry, twelve miles eastward, to Linville, is util-
ized by a daily hack from the latter place, and,
as the wheels drone along and you have your
fish-basket on your back and your spouse by
your side, the old road, which the new one often
crosses, looks like the deserted trail of a savage

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 121

tribe that had fled before civilization to an unmo-
lested hunting-ground.

Six miles on the way you come to the " Old
Fields of Toe/' an ante-rebellion muster-ground,
where you cross the Toe River. The name Toe,
as here applied, originated as follows :

Estetoe, a chief's daughter, was engaged to a
young man of the tribe, and, when her father
objected to the marriage, she drowned herself in
the clear stream, which the Indians afterwards
called by her name ; but the whites, being too
lazy to hinge their tongues upon the silvery
accents, changed the euphonious word to Toe,
which can mean no more than one of those
miserable corn-bearing extremities that had all
the rhetoric frozen out of them before the dis-
covery of Columbus.

Leaving the banks of the Estetoe, four miles
further takes you to Montezuma, the " preacher's
Mecca," where the sacred dust of a revolutionary
soldier, whose name was Gragg, sleeps in the
town cemetery ; and Mr. John Carpenter will
give you a square dinner, an oblong supper, a
good bed, and a breakfast fashioned after any
geometrical figure within the annals of the
higher mathematics, all for one dollar.

Two miles beyond Montezuma you roll into

Linville, where Mr. Thomas F. Parker, Presi-

V n

122 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

dent of the Liuville Improvement Co., has
a number of elegant cottages, whose exquisite
paintings and architectural designs thoroughly
compensate the beautiful forest for that part of
its destruction which gives them room.

But the most commodious building in the
town is Eseeola Inn, a chimney-topped, shingle-
gabled, and verandad edifice, where the summer
nights are rendered comfortable by the blazing
logs of many open fire-places, and the days are
cheerful with a health-giving tide of sweet air
that floats through the balanced windows and
gives '^ back the invalid the rose to his cheek."
O23j)osite the oflSce on the first floor is a large
music-room, which is beautifully finished in
native hard woods, lighted with brilHant chan-
deliers, ornamented with a sweet-toned piano,
and, having a floor as hard as lignumvitae and
as slick as a peeled onion, furnishes the finest
facilities for tripping the fantastic toe.

When your feet have grown tired of waltzing,
Morpheus folds you in his peaceful arms and
lays you where the ease of s|)ring-beds and the
soft touches of downy pillows give the weary
rest.

Three thousand years ago Solomon said :
" There is nothing new under the sun ;" but if
he could come back to this world and engage

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THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 123

board at Eseeola Inn, lie would find that some-
thing new has been invented ; for he could hol-
low " halloo" in a telej^hone and receive an
answer from a social-minded fellow in the tele-
phone ofl&ce over at Cranberry, and he could
chalk his cue and try his luck on a billiard-
ball, like which no rotary object ever revolu-
tionized across a rectangular game-table in the
city of Jerusalem.

This splendid building has hot and cold baths,
smoking and reception rooms, broad stairways
of easy ascent, carpeted rooms and hall-ways,
marble-topped office counters, extensive piazzas
for promenades, and a beautiful dining-room,
whose sumptuary ingatherings are guaranteed
by the proprietors to be equal, if not superior,
to those of any other house in the mountains
of North Carolina.

Such is the variety and flavor of the food that,
when you place your foot on the threshold of the
masticating department, your nasal proboscis is
greeted with the aroma of roasted mutton or
beef, and the alimentary pupils of your orbicular
instruments are fixed upon large slabs of comb
honey, consisting of the gathered sweets from
mountain flowers, and rivalling in delicacy the
nectar of the gods.

Among the delicious dishes of Eseeola's tables

124 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

is pure maple syrup, manufactured from maple
orchards on the Company's lands, and those
popular mountain batter-cakes, made from that
peculiarly-shaped grain, about which a lady re-
cently interrogated a gentleman, as follows :

" Kind sir," said she, " do you know how
buckwheat came into this country ?"

" No, madam," replied the man ; " but I will
thank you for any information you may give me
on that point."

" Well, sir," said the lady, " I will tell you.
It came into this country three-cornered."

Mr. James T. Skiles, former popular man-
ager of Luray Inn, Virginia, solicits patron-
age at Eseeola, at the rates of two dollars a
day, ten dollars a week, and thirty-two dollars a
month.

An object of great attraction, only one mile
from Linville, is Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey's ex-
pansive nursery of native ornamental plants,
shrubs, and trees, and when you visit this mani-
fold collection from the universal garden of
nature, you will be surprised that our American
parks, cemeteries, and lawns have been stuffed
with costly foreign importations, while the beau-
tiful orchids, ferns, blooming vines, flowering
shrubs, perennial herbs, aquatic and bog plants,
and evergreen and deciduous trees of the South-

p

VASE WITH RHODODENDRON AND AZALEA.

Page 125.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 125

ern Alleghany Mountains have, until recently,
been almost entirely excluded.

From this beautiful plantation of shrubs,
plants, and infant trees, Mr. George H. Vander-
bilt has purchased thousands of the hardy orna-
mentals that adorn his masfnificent estate near
Asheville; while gardens and boulevards in
England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy,
Belgium, and other foreign countries, are now
variegated with American flora from this new
and highly commendable enterprise upon the
banks of the jubilant Linville.

Mr. E. S. Eand has truthfully said : " We do
not api^reciate our American flora, and have
shut our eyes to the richness that lies all around
us. In England, a crowning glory of horticult-
ural exhibition is the show of American plants ;
and we in America don't know what they are."

Twelve miles down the stream, from Eseeola,
passing tlie Highland Nursery and the beauti-
ful farm and mansion of George R. Watkins, is
Linville Falls, where comfortable board can be
had at the house of Mr. Theodore Franklin at
twenty-five cents a meal, or one dollar a day.

THE YONAHLOSSEE EOAD.

From Linville, it is twenty miles east to Blow-
ing Kock, which is not only one of the most

11*

126 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

popular summer resorts in the Soutli, but also
a handsome town, two miles long, on the very
crest of the Blue Kidge ; and if more of the
buildings were painted white, it would be a
modern Alba Longa.

Mr. 8. T. Kelsey, the Colossus of Rhodes,
has recently connected these two places by the
grandest drive in the State, which, being chiselled
out of the rocks along the south side of the
Grandfather Mountain, cost multiplied thousands
of dollars. Its finish is as smooth as the rim of
a chariot- wheel, while the region through which it
passes is as rugged as if Vulcan's mighty anvils
had been thrown from the throttle of a volcano
and lodged on the mountain-side. High up the
imposing crags the eye is directed into great
dark holes and hollows that Sol's rays have
never penetrated ; but in the ojDposite direction,
the expansive view is extended far into the blue
haze of the sunny South.

About midway between Blowing Rock and
Linville, where the daily hack from the latter
place crosses Green Mountain Creek, a beau-
tiful fall, twelve feet high, is so close on the
upper side as to throw spray upon the dry-
goods of the passers-by, while immediately
below the road, the stream has a leap that is
more than twice as high as the first, and

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THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN: 127

equally enhanced in the other features of its
attractions.

Five miles from Linville, and just above the ele-
gant highway where it is crossed by a tumbling
creek, is the Leaning Bock, about one hundred
feet high, consisting of three truncated blocks
of stone set one upon another, the first tapering
gradually upward from its broad, square base to
fit the bottom of the second, and the top of the
second being patterned in like manner to the
bottom of the third. Up and down through the
centre of the crowning section is a rent, and at
the point where its lower extremity touches the
top of the middle division is a little soil formed
by the mixture of lodged leaves and disintegrated
rock, and supporting a flourishing bnnch of rho-
dodendron, which, in July, hangs out its scarlet
flora like a beautiful bouquet upon the bosom of
a Colossus.

The great Appian Way, leading from Rome by
way of Naples to Brundusium, was j)i'obably
not more interesting than the Yonahlossee Boad.
Statins called that ancient thoroughfare the Be-
gina Viarum, which, being of the Latin tongue,
means Queen of Boads. It was projected and
partly built, B.C. 312, by Appius Claudius, the
author of the famous dictum, " Every one is the
architect of his own fortune." Its width was

128 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

from fourteen to eighteen feet, and the large,
well-fitted stones with which it was laid looked
up through the flying wheels of Titus's chariot
and saw Vesuvius shoot his fires at the stars and
pour down the cinders under which Pompeii
slept for two thousand years in the peaceful
arms of the dead.

High over the E-egina Viarum were the in-
verted images of ships reflected from the fluo-
rescent waters of the Mediterranean, and sailing
on the fleecy waves of the sky. Even the
beautiful islands of that sea were apparently
inverted above the horizon, presenting the ob-
server with the tinted images of trees with their
tops downward, mountains projecting from the
sky, fat cattle grazing upon the verdure of the
heavens, and the contending armies of diflerent
nations and creeds intrenching themselves in the
clouds.

Such were the wonders of earth, sea, and sky
as seen from the ^^ Queen of Roads ;" such the
exquisite glimpses from which Cicero caught the
glorious inspiration that filled Home with elo-
quence, and the world with classic recollections.
But with the fall of the Western Empire, the
E-egina Viarum went to decay, and, during the
many centuries that have since elapsed, the
Yonahlossee Eoad, around tlie south side of

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 129

the great evergreen Grandfather, is one of the
few public highways that have again associated
the ease and elegance of travel with the most
ecstatic delights of the mind and heart.

Three miles from Linville, that beautiful
branch of the Yonahlosse, designated in the
*^ Ballad of the Beech" as " Kelsey's Curves,"
turns to the left, and winds back and forth up
crags and through huckleberry balds, the dis-
tance of one and a half miles to the hard
knuckles of the great Grandfather, which being
at the end of one of his uplifted arms is often
gloved in a cloud.

From this beautiful view, a foot-way leads
eastward, more than a mile, to the highest peak
of the mountain, where it will be met, at an
early day, by a splendid bridle-path constructed
from a favorable point on the Yonahlossee Road.
Four miles from Linville, and one mile be-
yond the bifurcation of Kelsey's Curves with
the main line, the " Alpen Way" branch, two
miles in length, turns to the right and, cross-
ing Beacon Heights, continues to the summit of
Grandmother Mountain, which we have hereto-
fore called the Queen Consort of the reigning
Grandfather.

The Princess, Beacon Heights, standing near
the king and queen, extends to each a hand of

130 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

filial love, and ever looks upon the father with
tearful eyes, like a Christian daughter endeavor-
ing to persuade her hard-hearted parent to re-
pentance. But the queen, having despaired of
softening the immovable monarch, glances at his
frowns with resignation, and directs the attention
of her guests to the beautiful wardrobe of the
princess, and invites them to the horticultural
displays of her own royal gardens.

The two beautiful roads which we have men-
tioned as departing from the Yonahlossee, the
one to the left and the other to the right, are
like twin sisters straying from their mother, by
her consent, and returning with myriads of
flowers to adorn the maternal palace of love.

From these splendid drives, which have been
built at greater cost than any others of the same
length in the South, aged persons, and those
otherwise unable to endure the fatigue of climb-
ing, can sit in the carriage, at elevations of over
five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and
enjoy as fine views as any region in the eastern
half of America affords.

Chuckey Joe, in " The Ballad of the Beech,"
calls a shelving rock a "rain-roost," because
under these persons often perch themselves in
times of rain. On the fifteen-thousand-acre
tract of mountain land, owned and improved by

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 131

the Linville Improvement Company, there is a
number of delightful "rain-roosts/' and where
nature left, too long a distance between any two
of them, it has been divided by a rustic shelter,
as a protection against the hazard of sudden
showers.

Those who have been ducked by the aid of a
cloud instead of a minister, can readily realize
the great comfort that these sheds must add to a
summer resort, for it has been no uncommon
thing, in Western North Carolina, to see a party
come in from a mountain clamber as wet as
drowned rats, with their garments flapped about
them, and their persons so stooped over, to con-
ceal their faces from view until they could get
to their rooms, that it was impossible for an
observer to tell which end of an individual was
up.

At Linville, where the august drive along the
side of the Grandfather is met by the beautiful
road from Cranberry, the Western Carolina
Stage-Coach Company have, among their many
handsome conveyances, an elegant Concord stage
called the Awahili, which, being of the Indian
vernacular, means Eagle ; and when this is drawn
back and forth, along the Yonahlosse Road, by
six splendid bays prancing between ornamental
mazes of laurel and pine, passing mirthful falls

132 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

and crossing streams like "liquid silver/' the
passengers are met by new and beautiful objects
of entertainment at every revolution, of the fly-
ing wheels that bear them onward to the sump-
tuous entertainments of Blowing Rock, or to the
cheerful accommodations of Eseeola's brilliant
halls.

In winter, the snowfall at Linville is lighter
and more gentle, and the climate less cold and
damp, than that of the Northern States; in
spring, the blooming dog-wood and service trees
hang out their white curtains as flags of truce
in a green tasselled army of innumerable trees ;
in summer, leagues of the most beautiful leafage
that ever waved to ^olian breezes stretch across
and far beyond the company's broad estate, and
in autumn, the monarch of gentle decay walks
through the land with a many colored garment,
robbing the leaves of their verdure and painting
on them a thousand tints more brilliant than the
Tyrian dye; while to these beauties of nature
the company have added all art and enterprise
in order to induce pleasure- and health-seekers
to purchase homes of peace and gladness within
their beautiful domain.

All around this infant metropolis of the High-
lands are flowers for the botanist, rocks for the
geologist, trout for the angler, landscapes for the

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THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 133

artist, sublimity for tlie poet, recreation for the
tired business man, invigoration for the weak,
ease for the okl, and for the young, beautiful
retreats, where Cupid wields the subduing power
of his golden dart and sends his victims into the
royal presence of Hymen, presiding beneath his
crown of sweet marjoram.

A PLEASANT JOURNEY.

From Linville to Blowing Rock there is a
choice of ways. If you want to take it leisurely
and catch trout as you go, you will loiter
up the stream, for the distance of four miles,
to Linville Gap, where a beautifully pinnacled
mountain on the left is Dunvegan, which
Chuckey Joe, in "The Ballad of the Beech,"
calls " Cloven Cliffs."

It is now less than a mile down the gurgling
brooks of the Watauga to Grandfather Hotel
and post-office, a white house nestling so near
the evergreens that the sweet odor of the
balsams is wafted in at the doors, and, sweeping
through the commodious hall-ways, cures hay-
fever and bronchitis, and prolongs the lives of
consumptives.

About fifty yards in front of the building, at
the foot of a declivity, flows the prattling infant
Watauga, teeming with speckled beauties, and

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134 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

altliough most of them, at this point, are too
small for the osier basket, yet plenty of nice
ones are found, only a mile below, where crystal
tributaries have swollen the stream.

Along the opposite bank, from the hotel, is a
narrow strip of bottom, about twenty yards wide,
from whose farther side rises a precipitous hill,
so profusely grown over with rhododendron, that
in the blooming season, from about June 20 to
August 10, it presents the veranda-sitting tourist
with a perfect wilderness of the gayest flowers.

This is the blooming base of the great ever-
green Grandfather, whose highest j)oint, only
three miles away, and just a few degrees south
of the zenith, is reached by a winding path that
passes by the coldest perennial spring, isolated
from perpetual snow, in the United States ; its
highest temj^erature being only forty-two de-
grees.

The neighborhood of Banner Elk, which is
five miles northwest, is reached by a rough road
that is being made better, while one mile in the
rear of the hotel Dunvegan rears its head so
high as to obscure the North star, and can be
surmounted only by an almost pathless clamber
through its rocky defiles.

All mountain ramblers concede that Grand-
father Hotel is a well-kept house, in a most

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN; 135

delightful spot, and watered by the best spring
in the Highlands.

It is said that a drummer once dined at a
hotel where the dinner was brought to him in
side plates, and, after he had eaten it all up, he
said to the waiter, " Well, I have enjoyed your
samples very much, so you will please bring in
the dinner." But Mr. J. Ervin Calloway, the
proprietor of Grandfather, and his good wife
Josephine, do not bring the meals in mussel-
shell dishes ; they put plenty of roasted mutton,
smothered chicken, buckwheat cakes and maple
syru]3, unskimmed milk and lots of other good
things, in capacious vessels on the table, and then
tell you that " fingers were made before forks, and,
that if you would rather use them than the tri-
pronged instrument, to just crack your whip."

All classes of persons, except those in search
of gayety, can spend a week or a month as
pleasantly at Grandfather as at any other house
in the mountains, and will get as much for the
price, which is fifty cents for single meals, one
dollar and a quarter a day, seven dollars a week,
and twenty-five dollars a month.

*

shull's mills.

From Grandfather, your objective point is
Shull's Mills, six miles down the Watauga, and

136 TEE BALSAM GROVES OF

as you travel along a good road between bloom-
ing buckwheat on one side, and waving corn on
the other, you pass the village of Foscoe, where
birds of good omen have always flitted through
the skies of William H. Calloway, and arrive at
your destination, where J. C. Shull, Esq., who
has a splendid wife and two charming daughters,
and lives in a nice unpainted farm-house, sur-
rounded by a grassy lawn, will give you nice
country board at fifty cents a day, three dollars
a week, or ten dollars a month.

Around Esquire Shull's, in the Watauga and
its tributaries, is good trout fishing ; and it was
here that a man, who thought himself wise, once
said to a lad, who was casting his line upon the
waters, "Adolescens, art thou trying to decoy
the piscatorial tribe with a bicurved barb on
which thou hast affixed a dainty allurement ?"
" No, sir," replied the lad ; " I'm fishing."
At ShuU's Mills, the tourist leaves the banks
of the beautiful Watauga and winds the rising
curves of a turnpike-road for the distance of
seven miles to Blowing Kock, where all classes
of board, from comfortable to fancy, can be had
at pro rata prices; and prancing steeds and
flying phaetons are always ready at the stables
of Henkels and Craig, or at those of Abernethy
and Yance.

TEE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 137

From Blowing Rock, a turnpike-road leads
twenty miles down the south side of the Blue
Bidge to Lenoir, the terminus of the Chester
and Lenoir narrow-gauge railroad, which con-
nects with the Western North Carolina at
Hickory, the Carolina Central at Lincolnton, the
Piedmont air-line at Gastonia, and the Charles-
ton, Cincinnati and Chicago at Yorkville.

The same gentlemen who keep liveries at Blow-
ing Bock have at Lenoir also splendid stables for
the immediate accommodation of those who are
skyward bound.

BOONE.

Eight miles north of Blowing Bock and con-
nected with it by a good road is Boone, the
county-seat of Watauga, where board that is
good enough for a king can be had at W. L.
Bryan's Hotel, or at the hotel of T. J. Coffey
and Brothers, at the rates of twenty-five cents
for single meals, one dollar a day, six dollars a
week, and twenty dollars a month.

In a bottom, not far from the court-house,
Daniel Boone, for whom the place is named, once
had a cabin, and the pile of stones that still
marks the place of his chimney, together with
the location and name of the town, has furnished

138 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

the "Bard of the Highlands" with sufficient
material for the following elegant poem : —

BOONE.

Among Watauga's fertile hills,

Where music flows from crystal rills,

And health is victor o'er disease,

And vigor lurks in ev'ry breeze,

And all the forests and the fields

A growth of richest verdure yields,

And fruits and flowers profusely grow ;

A land where milk and honey flow.

Mountains promiscuous, heaped and piled.

And landscapes wrapt in grandeur wild,

And beauty lingers all around

And reigns in majesty profound.

Within this mountain solitude

There stands a village, small and rude.

Hard by the base of Howard's Knob,

A mountain prince, a proud nabob,

Whose rocky bluffs forever frown

With dread severeness on the town.

As independent, bold, and free

As promontory on the sea.

This mountain wears a look austere.

But should excite no hate or fear ;

He has a mission, noble, grand,

Born more to serve than to command ;

And owns a mission more to shield

Than arbitrary power to wield ;

He courts our rapture and delight,

And not suspicion or our fright.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 139

So many blessings from him flow,
"We crown him friend and not a foe ;
He guards the town as kind and mild
As the fond mother guards her child ;
And when the town is wrapt in sleep,
His nightly vigils faithful keep,
And holds communion with the stars,
And talks with Yenus and with Mars,
And fain would shield from ev'ry harm.
He checks the fury of the storm,
And tempts the thunderbolt to lurch
And spare the steeple of the church.
And waste all its electric fires
On his defiant rock}^ spires ;
And all may quench their raging thirst
Where fountains from his bosom burst.
And roll through various gorges down
And waters furnish for the town.
This mountain sage is old in age
And has a fame for hist'ry's page ;
He is as old as Eden's lawn,
And he beheld Creation's dawn.
Man's life is like the flower or grass,
But he lives on while ages pass ;
A thousand years ago he saw
The planets roll with perfect law.
And on his head the stars did shed
Their light, and, from her Eastern bed.
The moon rose up and made her bow,
And smiled the same as she does now.
He notes the actions of mankind.
Whether for good or bad inclined ;
He saw depart a savage race,
And saw another take its place.

140 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

A hundred years or more ago
The Indian bent his deadly bow,
The well-aimed arrow quickly sped,
A deer did bound and then was dead.
No village then, no glittering spires.
The stars looked down on Indian fires ;
No golden fields, no Sabbath bells,
The hills echoed with savage yells,
The red man owned the vast domain
From mountain crag to fertile plain ;
He thought his title was in fee,
And oh, how happy, wild, and free !
Eut stop, O savage ! stop and think ;
You're standing on destruction's brink;
Let all your hopes be turned to fears
And deep despair instead of cheers.
" The die is cast," your fate is sealed \
"What dreadful foe is that concealed
In yonder copse? with flashing eyes
And heart that knows no compromise ;
With such a bold, determined look
That death he could undaunted brook;
An iron purpose that fairly mocks
A thousand savage tomahawks.
Oh, savage, now thy woe bewail.
For Daniel Boone is on thy trail,
A hero, grand, immortal, brave.
Whose fame grows brighter from the grave.
A hardy yeoman, warrior bold,
Enduring heat, defying cold.
Before whose awe-inspiring tread
The savage further westward fled
Towards the sunset's russet glow,
To bend again his deadly bow ;

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 141

A woodsman, artful, cunning, keen,
A foe could see, himself unseen,
And win a battle in retreat.
And brinoj out victory from defeat.
Nor Eoman arm was e'er so strong,
Nor Spartan valor set in song,
That could eclipse our hero grand
Who gave us this, our Switzerland.
This John the Baptist sought a place
For the great Anglo-Saxon race ;
And soon the land was occupied
By civilization's rushing tide.
What meed of praise could be too great
Our hero's name to celebrate ?
What honors could our race confer
Too great for such a pioneer ?
What village would not, boasting, claim
To wear the mighty hero's name ?
And such is ours, 'mid babbling rills.
Among Watauga's fertile hills.
Where crags and stars communicate
The highest court-house in the State.
What sacred memories hover 'round
This solitary spot of ground.
Where stood the flue of Daniel's tent ;
A pile of stones, now heaped and blent,
Some of them taken rough, unhewn,
That laid the corner-stone of Boone,
And others, from the ashes swept,
Are now by relic-seekers kept ;
And still a mound of stones remain
Upon a richly-studded plain.

142 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

VALLE CRUCIS.

Seven miles west of Boone, eight miles east
of Banner Elk, and twelve miles northwest of
Blowing Bock is Valle Crucis (Vale of the
Cross), where there is bass-fishing in the Wa-
tauga, and the Mary Etta Falls of Dutch Creek
have a leap of eighty feet into a foaming pool,
that is bordered with an evergreen selvage of
laurel and pine.

At this place, the hospitable H. Taylor and
his descendants have built handsome estates on
the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey, which flour-
ished under Bishop Ives in about 1845, and fell
with his apostasy to Bome in 1852.

The name, Valle Crucis, is said to have been
suggested by the fact that two mountain tribu-
taries, flowing towards each other and emptying
into Dutch Creek below the falls, form a cross
with that crystal stream, in the centre of the
beautiful valley where the Abbey was located.

A large rustic arm-chair, made and occupied
by the devout William West Skiles during his
missionary work at Valle Crucis, now sits in the
front piazza of Mr. C. D. Taylor, and shoots up
its fabric of rhododendron and calmia boughs
in the most beautiful style of the Gothic archi-
tecture.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 143

The very best rural board can be had at Valle
Crucis, at reasonable country prices, with D. F.
Baird, Sheriff of Watauga County, who lives in
a commodious white house, where the air without
blossoms with the odor of plenty's horn, and
the within is adorned with a cheerful wife and
three rose-lipped daughters of joy.

/

144 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAPTEE VIII.

JOURNAL OF ANDRE MICHAUX.

[The following sketch of the history of Andre Mi-
chaux's career is condensed from the memoir prepared
by Professor Charles S. Sargent, of Brooklyn, Massachu-
setts, as an introduction to the journal published by the
American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia.]

The younger Michaux, in tlie year 1824,
presented to the American Philosophical Society
the manuscript diary kept by his father during
his travels in America. The first parts had
been unfortunately lost in the wreck of the
vessel in which Michaux returned to France
from America, and no record is jDreserved of his
travels in this country from the time of his
arrival in New York in October, 1785, until his
first visit to South Carolina in 1787.

The first notice of the journal which appeared
in this country is found in a paper, by Professor
Asa Gray, entitled " Notes of a Botanical Ex-
cursion to the Mountains of North Carolina,''
published in the American Journal of Science,
in 1841. This brief extract, together with a

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 145

more detailed account of tliose parts of Micliaux's
document which relate to Canada, published in
1863, by the Abbe Ovide Brunet, directed the
attention of botanists to this record of the travels
of one of the most interesting and picturesque
figures in the annals of botanical discovery in
America, and for many years the feeling has
existed among them that the journal which fur-
nishes an important chapter in the history of
the development of American botany should be
published. The American Philosophical So-
ciety having shared in these views, a copy of the
manuscript has been placed in my hands for
publication. It is now printed as Michaux
wrote it, by the light of his lonely camp-fires,
during brief moments snatched from short hours
of repose, in the midst of hardships and often
surrounded with dangers. The character of the
man appears in this record of his daily life, and
any attempt to correct or extend his words would
destroy their individuality and diminish the his-
torical value of his diary.

The journal is something more than a mere
diary of travel and botanical discovery. The
information which it contains in regard to vari-
ous plants first detected by Michaux is valuable
even now, and his remarks upon the condition
of the remote settlements which he visited in the

Q k 13

146 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

course of his wonderings are interesting and
often amusing. They record the impressions of
a man of unusual intelligence — a traveller in
many lands, who had learned by long practice to
use his eyes to good advantage, and to write
down only what he saw.

He was the first botanist who ever travelled
extensively in this country, although it must not
be forgotten that John and William Bartram,
his predecessors by several years in the same
field, did much to prepare the way for his wider
and more detailed explorations. The first con-
nected and systematic work upon the flora of
North America was based largely upon his col-
lections, and bears the impress of his name,
while it was by his efforts that many American
plants were first made known in the gardens of
Europe.

Michaux was born at Salory, in the neighbor-
hood of Versailles, on March 7, 1746, and early
became interested in the cultivation and study
of plants. He left Paris, in 1782, for Aleppo
and Bagdad, and, after travelling extensively
and mastering the Persian language, he returned
to Paris early in 1785, bringing with him a
valuable herbarium, and a large collection of
seeds.

At this time the French government was

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 147

anxious to introduce into the royal plantations
the most valuable trees of ea>stern North America,
and Michaux was selected for this undertaking.
He was instructed to explore the territory of the
United States, to gather seeds of trees, shrubs,
and other plants, and to establish a nursery near
New York for their reception, and afterwards
to send them to France, where they were to be
planted in the Park of Rambouillet. He was
directed also to send game birds from America,
with a view to their introduction into the plan-
tations of American trees.

Michaux, accompanied by his son, then fifteen
years old, arrived in New York in October, 1785.
Here, during two years, he made his principal
residence, established a nursery, of which all
trace has how disappeared, and making a num-
ber of short botanical journeys into New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The fruits of
these preliminary explorations, including twelve
boxes of seeds, five thousand seedling trees, and
a number of live partridges, were sent to Paris
at the end of the first year.

Michaux's first visit to South Carolina was
made in SejDtember, 1786. He found Charleston
a more suitable place for his nurseries, and made
that city his headquarters during the rest of his
stay in America. Michaux's journeys in this

148 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

country after his establishment in Charleston,
coyer the territory of North America from
Hudson's Bay to Indian Hiver, in Florida, and
from the Bahama Islands to the banks of the
Mississippi Kiver.

In 1788 he was called upon by the minister
of the French Republic, lately arrived in New
York, to proceed to Kentucky, to execute some
business growing out of the relations between
France and Spain with regard to the transfer
of Louisiana. This political journey, and a
second made into the far West, occupied long
intervals of Michaux's time, covering a period
of about seven years, at the end of which he
returned finally to Charleston in the spring of
1796. His nurseries were in a most flourishing
condition ; they were stocked with the rarest
American plants collected during years of labor
and hardship ; and with many of those plants
of the old world which Michaux was first to
introduce into the United States. The tallow
tree {Stillingia sebifera), now often cultivated
and somewhat naturalized in the Southern States,
and the beautiful Albizzia Julibrissin, were first
planted in the United States by him. He first
taught the settlers in the Alleghany Mountains
the value of the Ginseng, and showed them how
to prepare it for the Chinese market, — a service

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 149

wliicli gained for him a membersliip in the ex-
ckisive Agricultural Society of Charleston.

His movements for several years had been
impeded and the success of his journeys inter-
fered with by the lack of financial support from
the French government, and Michaux found, on
his return to South Carolina, that his resources
were entirely exhausted. An obscure botanical
traveller, almost forgotten in a distant land, had
little hope of recognition from Paris during the
closing years of the last century, and it was now
evident that he could depend no longer on sup-
jDort and assistance from France. He deter-
mined, therefore, rather than sell the trees which
he longed to see flourishing on French soil, to
return to Paris.

Michaux sailed from Charleston on the 13th
of August, 1796. The voyage was tempestuous ;
and on the 18th of September the vessel was
wrecked on the coast of Holland, where the
crew and passengers, worn out by exposure and
fatigue, would have perished but for the assist-
ance of the inhabitants of the little village of
Egmont. Michaux fastened himself to a piece
of plank, and was finally washed ashore uncon-
scious, and more dead than alive. His baggage
was lost; but his precious packages of plants,
which were stored in the hold of the vessel, were

13*

150 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

saved, though saturated with salt water. He
remained in Egmont for several weeks, to regain
his strength and to dry and rearrange his plants,
and did not reach Paris until January. He was
received with great distinction and kindness by
the botanists of the Museum, but a bitter disap-
pointment awaited him. An insignificant num-
ber only of the six thousand trees which he had
sent to France during the eleven years he had
passed in America remained alive. The storms
of the Kevolution and of the Empire had swept
thi'ough the nurseries of Rambouillet, and Mi-
chaux's American trees were destroyed or hope-
lessly scattered.

This was the greatest disappointment of his
life, but he was not discouraged. His longings
were to return to America, but the French gov-
ernment would not supply the necessary means,
and on the IStli of October, 1800, he sailed-,
with Baudin on his voyage of discovery to New
Holland; and on the 19th of February, tliQ^^
following year, the expedition reached the Isle
of France. Here, after a stay of six months,
in which Michaux made his first acquaintance ^
with the vegetation of the real tropics, he left ^
the party for the purpose of exploring the island
of Madagascar, which seemed to offer , a ;niore ;
useful field than New Holland for his labors. -£,

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 151

He landed on the east coast, and at once set
about laying out a garden, in which he hoped to
establish, provisionally, the plants he intended
to bring back from his journeys in the interior.
Impatient of the delays caused by the indolence
of the natives he had employed to prepare the
ground, Michaux, in spite of the warnings of
persons familiar with the danger of exposure
and over-exertion under a tropical sun, insisted
upon working himself day after day. He was
soon prostrated with fever, but his vigorous
constitution and indomitable will enabled him
to resist the attack, and his health being partly
restored at the end of four months, he was ready
to start for the mountains. His preparations
were all made, but on the eve of his departure,
late in November, 1802, he was attacked again
with fever and died suddenly. He was only
fifty-six years old, still in the prime of life, and
possessed of all his powers when his useful
career was thus suddenly brought to an end.

152 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

' EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF ANDRE

»

MICHAUX. — Translated.

[The Journal of Andre Michaux from the time he
passed Charlotte, on his way to the mountains of
Western North Carolina, until he returned to Charles-
ton, from which point he had started.]

July 22. — Passed tlirough Charlotte in Meck-
lenburg. Red clay soil; quartz rocks; clear
waters formerly : the waters have the color of
dead leaves or dry tobacco. Vegetation, red-
oaks, black-oaks, and white-oaks, etc. Actea
spicata. . . . Slept six miles from Tuck-a-Segee
ford.

July 23. — Passed through Ben Smith, twenty
miles from Charlotte. Two or three miles before
arriving there saw the Magnolia tomentoso-glauca
fol. cordatis longiorib. Slept six miles from B.
Smith.

July 24. — Passed through Lincoln and dined
with Beinhart. Calamus aromaticus. Slept at
the old shoemaker's.

July 25. — Came to Henry Watner, now Bob-
ertson.

July 26. — Arrived at Morgan ton, Burke Court-
House, thirty miles from Bobertson. Frutex
Calycantha facies, etc.

TEE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 153

July 27. — Stayed at Morgan ton on account of
the rain and sw,ollen creeks which could not be
passed except by swimming.

July 28. — Remained at Morganton.

July 29. — Left Morganton, and slept at John
Rutherford's, near whose house I went over a
bridge across Muddy Creek.

July 30. — Came back into the usual road,
which leads to Turkey Cove, and arrived at the
house of a man named Ainsworth.

July 31.^ — Herborized on the Linville high
mountains, southeast of Ainsworth's residence;
and on the rocks and mountains denuded of trees
collected a little shrub {Leiophyllum buxifolium),

August 1. — Herborized on mountains of very
rich soil, situated to the northeast. Measured a
tulip-tree twenty-three French feet in circum-
ference.

August 2. — Herborized towards the mountains
to the northward.

August 3. — Herborized among Cyperoides and
other aquatic plants.

August 4. — Prepared for the journey to the
Black Mountain.

August 5. — Deferred the journey on account
of the lack of provisions.

August 6. — Set out and reached the place
called Crab-tree.

154 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

August 7. — Herborized on the mountains in
vicinity of Crab-tree.

August 8. — Herborized.

August 9. — Continued my lierborizations.

August 10. — Arrived at the foot of Black
Mountain.

August 11. — Arrived on the side of Black

Mountain. (Among the plants collected he
names " fox-grapes, fruit good to eat.")

August 12. — Returned from the mountain.

August 13. — Arrived at the house of Mr.
Ainsworth.

August 14. — A thick fog made it difficult to
explore the high mountains. Herborized in the
valleys. ^ "

August 15. — Bain.

August 16. — Journeyed towards the Yellow
Mountain and Bonn (Boan) Mountain. Beached
Towe (Toe) Biver, Bright's Settlement. The
principal inhabitants of this place are Davinport,
Wiseman. Collected herbs : Azalea coccinea,
lutea, flava, alba, and rosea ; all these varieties
of the Azalea nudiflora are found in this re-
gion.

August 17. — Agreed with a hunter (Davin-
port) to go to the mountains.

August 18. — Herborized and described several
plants.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 155

August 19. — Started to go towards the high
mountains.

August 20. — Herborized in the mountains.

August 21. — Keached the summit of E-oun
(Roan) Mountain ; found in abundance a small
shrub with boxwood-like leaves which I formerly
designated as Leiophyllum buxifolium, but the
capsule of which has three cells and opens at
the top.*

August 22.— Reached the summit of the Yel-
low Mountain.

August 23. — Returned to Davinport's house.

August 24. — Put my collections in order.

August 25. — Rain.

^t^yt«5^26l^ Started for Grandfather Moun-
tain, the most elevated of all those which form
the chain of the Alleghanies and the Appala-
chians.

August 27. — Reached the foot of the highest
mountain.

August 28. — Climbed as far as the rocks.

August 29. — Continued my herborizations.

August 30. — Climbed to the summit of the
highest mountain of all North America, and.

* It is strange that Michaux did not mention the
abundance of this shrub growing on the bare rocks of
Grandfather Mountain.

156 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

with my companion and guide, sang the Mar-
seillaise Hymn, and cried, '^ Long live America
and the French Republic ! long live Liberty !
etc." Le 30 3Ionte au sommet de la plus haute
montagne de toute VAm. Sept. et avec mon com-
pagnon Guide, chante Vhymne des Marseillois et
crie Vive VAmerique et la Repuhliq. Frangaise,
Vive la Liherte, etc., etc.

August 31. — Rain all day. Stayed in camp.

September 1. — Came back to the house of my
guide Davinj)ort.

September 2. — Rain. Herborized.

September, 3. — Arranged my collections.

September 4. — The same work.

September 5. — Started for Table Mount.

September 6. — Visited the cliffs of the moun-
tain Hock-bill (Hawk-bill) and of Table Moun-
tain. These mountains are very barren, and
the new shrub {Leiophyllum) is the only rare
plant found there. It is there in abundance.
Slept at a distance of six miles, at Park's.

September 7. — Started for Burke Court-House
or Morgan ton. Slept at the house of General
MacDowal. Saw near his house Spirea tomen-
tosa in abundance. From Burke to John
Wagely's house, about twelve miles. From John

Wagely's to Thomas Young's, . From

Thomas Young's to Davinport's, eight miles.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 157

September 8. — Arrived at Burke Court-House
or Morgaiiton. Visited Colonel Avery and
stayed at his house.

September 9. — Started in the evening from
Morganton ; slept three miles distant from it.
Met an inhabitant of Stateborough, Mr. Atkin-
son, who invited me to his house.

September 10. — Reached Robertson, thirty
miles from Morganton.

September 11. — SlejDt at Reinhart's, Lincoln
Court-House, fifteen miles from Robertson.

September 12. — Started for Yadkin River and
Salsbury. Slept at Catawba Spring, eighteen
miles from Lincoln.

September 13. — Went to Betty's Ford on the
Catawba River, twenty miles from Lincoln.
Slept at a farm eight miles before coming to
Salsbury, where the three roads from Phila-
delphia, from Charleston, and from Kentucky
meet.

September 14. — Passed through Salsbury, a
town of better appearance than the other towns
of North Carolina. Fifty miles from Lincoln to
Salsbury. Continued my way to Fayetteville ;
crossed Yadkin River and slept fourteen miles
from Salsebury.

September 15. — Passed several creeks and low,
but very stony hills.

14

158 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

September 16. — Part of the road very stony.
Saw the MagnoL acuminata florib. luteis : Collin-
sonia tuberosa. Came then upon sandy ground.
Slept at the house of Martin, store-kee23er.

September 17. — Continued my way across the
sand-hills.

September 18. — Keached a place six miles from
Fayetteville. Lost my two horses.

September 19 and 20. — Employed these two
days in searching for my horses.

September 21. — Found one of the two and . . .

September 22. — Arrived again at Fayetteville,
formerly Cross Creek. The river Cape Fear
flows past that town. Saw in my herborizations
swamps which surround the town. Cupressus
disticha, thyoides, often together.

September 23. — Started from Fayetteville after
having had the satisfaction to read the news,
arrived the evening before, from Philadelphia,
concerning the glorious victories of the Re-
public. Slept at the house of the old (?) Mac-
Cay, fifteen miles from Fayetteville on the road
from Salisbury.

September 24. — Took the road from Charles-
ton on the left and passed Drowned Creek at
MacLawchland bridge. But the more direct
route from Fayetteville to Charleston is by way
of Widow Campbell Bridge, forty (?) miles from

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 159

Fayetteville. From Widow Camj^bell Bridge to
Gum Swamp, ten miles from the line that sepa-
rates North Carolina and South Carolina.

September 25. — Passed through Gum Swamp
and slept eight miles from Fayetteville. Saw
the Cupressus thyoides and the Cupressus disticha
in several swamps. Saw the Andromeda Wil-
mingt. in abundance in all the swamps. Liquid-
ambar peregrinum, etc. Two miles from Gum
Swamp we reach South Carolina.

September 26. — Passed through Long Bluff,
a small hamlet, two miles south of the river Big
Pedee, seventy-four miles from Fayett-eville.

September 27. — Passed through Black Swamp,
twenty-two miles from Long Bluff. Col. Benton,
twelve miles from L. Bluff. Black Creek, ten
miles from L. Bl. Jefferis Creek ten miles from
L. Bl.

September 28. — Passed Lynches Creek, forty
miles from L. Bl.

September 29. — Passed Black Biver, thirty
miles from Lynch Creek. A certain Lorry
keeps the ferry of Black Biver.

September 30. — Arrived at Maurice Ferry, on
the Santee Eiver, fifteen miles from Black River,
and twenty miles from Monk's Corner. The
passage of the ferry was dangerous, and I was
obliged to go to Lenew Ferry. It is twenty-five

160 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

miles from Maurice Ferry to Lenew or Lenew's
Ferry.

October 1. — Left Lenew's Ferry and passed
tlirougli Strawberry's Ferry, twenty-jfive miles
from Lenew's Ferry, and twenty-eight miles
from Charleston. Reached the dwelling-house
near Ten M. House.

October 2. — Left for Charleston.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 161

DICTIONARY OF ALTITUDES

(above the level of the sea)
IN

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA.

TAKEN FEOM OFFICIAL EEPOETS.

WATAUGA COUNTY.

FEET.

Blowing Eock, highest town in the State 4.090

Boone, highest Court-House in the State 3,250

Grandfather Hotel and Post-Office, nearest to sum-
mit of Grandfather Mountain 4,050

Yalle Crucis, neighborhood and Post-Office 2,726

ShuU's Mills, neighborhood and Post-Office 2,917

Cook's Gap, of the Blue Eidge 3,307

Banner Elk.

Post-Office 3,900

Beech Mountain 5,541

Hanging Eock 5,224

Sugar Mountain, Mitchell County 5,228

Grandfather Mountain.

Watauga, Mitchell, and Caldwell Counties.. 5,987
Dunvegan, bluff of Eough Enough Eidge, near

Grandfather 4,924

I 14*

162 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

FEET.

Howard's Knob, overlooking Boone 4,451

Bald of Eich Mountain. 5,300

Sugarloaf. 4,606

Snake Mountain 5,594

Elk Knob 5,574

Pine Orchard Mountain, near Elk Knob 4,800

Eiddle's Knob, near Elk Knob 4,800

Flat-Top, near Blowing Eock 4,537

MITCHELL COUNTY (East End).

Elk Park 3,250

Hump Mountain, near Elk Park 5,541

Cranberry Property.

Iron furnace 3,165

Hotel 3,228

Bellevue Farm, on top of Fork Mountain... 4,650
Cranberry Gap, between Cranberry Creek

and Toe (Est^toe) Eiver 3,650

Toe (Estetoe) Eiver, at Old Fields of Toe 3,650

Miller Gap, Blue Eidge 3,733

Montezuma 3,950

LiNviLLE Falls

Sugar Mountain, near the Watauga line and

overlooking Banner Elk 5,228

LiNviLLE Property.

Eseeola Inn 3,800

Eighteen miles of Yonahlossee Eoad, be-
tween Linville and Blowing Eock, from

4,000 to 5,000

Beacon Heights 4,650

Grandmother Mountain 4,764

Grandmother Gap 4,191

V

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 163

FEET.

Linville Gap, Blue Eidge, head of Watauga

and Linville Elvers 4,100

McCanless Gap, Blue Eidge, between Ban-
ner Elk and Linville 4,191

Beech Knob 5,067

Flat-Top Mountain 5,026

Grandfather Mountain 5,987

ASHE COUNTY.

Jefferson Court-House 2,940

Negro Mountain 4,597

Mulatto Mountain,..., 4,687

Three-Top Mountain 4,950

Paddy Mountain 4,300

Phoenix Mountain 4,673

Bluff Mountain.... 5,060

Peak Mountain 5,100

"White-Top Mountain, across the Yirginia line 5,678

WILKE COUNTY.

Wilksboro Court-House 1,043

Little Grandfather Mountain 3,783

Tompkins's Knob 4,055

Deep Gap, of the Blue Eidge 3,105

CALDWELL COUNTY.

Lenoir Court-House 1,185

Patterson's factory ! 1,279

Hibriten Mountain, near Lenoir 2,242

164 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

BURKE COUNTY.

FEET.

Morganton Court-House 1,184

Linville Mountain, south end 3,766

Short-Off Mountain, north summit 3,105

Table Rock Mountain 3,918

Hawksbill Mountain 4,090

HEIGHTS OF THE MOUNTAINS AROUND

ASHEVILLE.

VALLEY OF THE SWANNANOA.

Junction of Flat Creek with Swannanoa Eiver.... 2,250

Joseph Stepp's house 2,368

Burnett's house 2,423

Lower Mountain house, Jesse Stepp's floor of

piazza 2,770

W. Patton's cabins, end of carriage road 3,244

Resting Place, brook behind last log-cabin 3,955

Upper Mountain, house 5,246

Ascending to Toe River Gap, passage, main branch

above Stepp's 3,902

IN THE BLUE RIDGE.

Toe River Gap, between Potato Top and High

Pinnacle...... 5,188

High Pinnacle, of Blue Ridge 5,701

Rocky Knob's south peak 5,306

Big Spring, on Rocky Knob 5,080

Gray Beard 5,448

CRAGGY CHAIN.

Big Craggy 6,090

Bull's Head.....* 5,935

Craggy Pinnacle 5,945

1 THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 165

BLACK MOUNTAIN, MAIN CHAIN.

FEET.

Potato Top 6,393

Mt. Mitchell 6,582

Mt. Gibbs 6,591

Stepp's Gap, the cabin 6,103

Mt. Hallback, or Sugarloaf. 6,403

Black Dome, or Mitchell's high peak 6,707

Dome Gap 6,352

Balsam Cone, Guyot of State maps 6,671

Hairy Bear 6,610

Bear Gap 6,234

Black Brother, Sandoz of State maps 6,619

Cat-tail Peak 6,611

Eocky Trail Gap 6,382

Dear Mount, North Point 6,233

Long Eidge, South Point 6,208

Middle Point. 6,259

NorthPoint 6,248

Bowlen's Pyramid, North End 6,348

NORTH-WESTERN CHAIN.

Blackstock's Knob 6,380

Yeates's Knob 5,975

CANET RIVER VALLEY.

Green Ponds, at Tom Wilson's highest house 3,222

Tom Wilson's new house 3,110

Wheeler's, opposite Big Ivy Gap 2,942

Cat-tail Fork,junction with Caney Eiver 2.873

Sandofor Gap, or Low Gap, summit of road 3,176

Burnsville, Court-House Square .., 2,840

Green Mountain, near Burnsville, highest point... 4,340

166 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

GROUP OF THE ROAN MOUNTAIN.

FEET.

Summit of the road from Burnsville to Toe

Eiver 3,139

Toe Eiver Ford, on the road from Burnsville to

Eoan Mountai n 2,131

Baily'sfarm 2,379

Brigg's house, foot of the Eoan Mountain, valley

of Little Eock Creek .'.... 2,757

Yellow Spot, above Brigg's 5,158

Bright's Yellow 5,440

Little Yellow Mount, highest 5,196

The Cold Spring, summit of Eoan 6,132

Grassy Eidge Ball, northeast continuation of

Eoan Mountain 6,230

Eoan High Bluff. 6,296

Eoan High Knob 6,313

FROM BURNSVILLE TO GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN.

South Toe Eiver Ford 2,532

Toe Eiver Ford, near Autrev's 2.547

North Toe Eiver Ford, below Childsville 2,652

Blue Eidge, head of Brushy Creek 3,425

Linville Eiver Ford, below head of Brushy

Creek 3,297

Linville Eiver, at Pierey's 3,607

Head-waters of Ivinville and Watauga Eiver, foot

of Grandfather Mountain 4,100

Grandfather Mountain, summit , 5,987

Watauga Eiver, at Shull's mill-pond ^ 2,917

Taylorsville, Tennessee 2,395

Whitetop, Yirginia 5,530

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 167

FROM BURNSVILLE TO THE BALD MOUNTAIN — OBSERVA-
TIONS MADE BY PROFESSOR W. C. KERR, OF DAVIDSON
COLLEGE.

FEET.

Sampson's Gap 4,130

Egypt Cove, at Proffit's 3,320

Wolf's Camp Gap 4,359

Bald Mountain, summit 5,550

VALLEY OF THE BIG IVY CREEK.

Dillingham's house, below Yeates's Knob, or Big

Butte 2,568

Junction of the three forks 2,276

Solomon Carter's house 2,215

Stocksville, at Black Stock's 2,216

Mouth of Ivy River, by railroad survey 1,684

FROM ASHEVILLE TO MOUNT PISGAH.

Asheville Court-House 2,250

Sulphur Springs, the spring 2.092

Hominy Cove, at Solomon Davies's 2,542

Little West Pisgah 4,724

Great Pisgah 5,757

BIG PIGEON VALLEY.

Forks of Pigeon, at Colonel Cathey's 2,701

East fork of Pigeon, at Captain T. Lenoir's 2,855

Waynesville Court-House 3,756

Sulphur Spring, Richland Yalley, at James R. G.

Love's 2,716

Mr. Hill's farm, on Crab Tree Creek 2,714

Crab Tree Creek, below Hill's 2,524

Cold Mountain 6,063

168 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

CHAIN OF THE RICHLAND BALSAM.

FEET.

Bichland, between Eichland Creek and the west

fork of Pigeon Creek, and at E. Medford's 2,938

E. Medford's farm, foot of Lickston's Mountain... 3,000

Lickston Mountain 5,707

Deep Pigeon Gap 4,907

Cold Spring Mountain 5,915

Double Spring Mountain 6,380

Eichland Balsam, or Cancy Fork Balsam Divide... 6,425

Chimney Top 6,234

Spruce Eidge Top 6,076

Lone Balsam 5,898

Old Bald 5,786

CHAIN OP WESTENER'S BALD.

Westener Bald, north peak 5,414

Pinnacle 5,692

GREAT MIDDLE CHAIN OF BALSAM MOUNTAINS BETWEEN
SCOTt'S creek and low CREEK.

Enos Plott's farm, north foot of chain 3,002

Old Field Mountain 5,100

Huckleberry Knob 5,484

Enos Plott's Balsam, first Balsam, north end 6,097

Jones's Balsam, north point 6,223

South end 6,055

Eock Stand Knob 6,002

Brother Plott 6,246

Amos Plott's Balsam, or Great Divide 6,278

EockyFace 6,031

White Eock Eidge 5,528

Black Eock 5,815

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 169

FEET.

Panther Knob 5,359

Perry Knob 5,026

VALLEY OF SCOTT's CREEK.

Love's saw-mill 2,911

Maclure's farm 3,285

Eoad Gap, head of Scott's Creek 3.357

John Brown's farm 3,049

Bryson's farm 2,173

John Love's farm 2,226

Webster Court-House 2,203

VALLEY OF TUCKASEEGE AND TRIBUTARIES.

Tuckaseege Eiver, mill, below "Webster, near the

road to Quallatown , 2,004

Junction of Savannah Creek 2,001

Junction of Scott's Creek 1,977

Quallatown, main store 1,979

Soco Eiver, ford to Oconaluftee 1,990

Soco Gap, road summit 4.341

Amos Plott's farm, on Pigeon 3,084

Oconaluftee Eiver, junction, Bradley Fork 2,203

Eobert Collins's highest house 2,500

Junction of Eaven's and Straight Fork 2,476

Junction of Bunch's Creek 2,379

CHAIN OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN, FROM NORTHEAST
TO SOUTHWEST, FROM THE BOUND OF HAYWOOD COUNTY
TO THE GAP OF LITTLE TENNESSEE.

The Pillar, head of Straight Fork of Oconaluftee

Eiver 6,255

Thermometer Knob 6,157

Eaven's Knob 6,230

H 15

170 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

FEET.

Tricorner Knob 6,188

Mt. Guyot, so named by Mr. Buckley, in common. 6,636

Mt. Henry 6,373

Mt. Alexander 6,447

South Peak 6,299

The True Brother, highest or central peak 5,907

Thunder Knob 5,682

Laurel Peak 5,922

Eeinhardt Gap 5,220

Top of Eichland Eidge 5,492

Indian Gap 5,317

Peck's Peak 6,232

Mt. Ocoana 6,135

Eighthand, or New Gap 5,096

Mt. Mingus 5,694

GROUP OF BULLHEAD, TENNESSEE.

Central Peak, or Mt. Lecompte 6,612

West Peak, or Mt. Curtis 6,568

North Peak, or Mt. Stafford 6,535

Cross Knob 5,921

Neighbor 5,771

Master Knob 6,013

Tomahawk Gap 5,450

Alum Cave 4,971

Alum Cave Creek, junction with Little Pigeon
Eiver 1 3,848

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN, MAIN CHAIN.

Eoad Gap 5,271

Mt. Collins 6,188

Collins'sGap 5,720

Mt. Love 6,443

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 171

FEET.

Clingman's Dome 6,660

Mt. Buckley 6,599

Chimney Knob ;... 5,588

Big Stone Mountain 5,614

Big Cherry Gap 4,838

Corner Knob 5,246

Forney Eidge Peak 5,087

Snaky Mountain 5,195

Thunderhead Mountain 5,520

Eagletop 5,433

Spence Cabin 4,910

Turkey Knob 4,740

Opossum Gap 3,840

North Bald 4,711

The Great Bald's central peak 4,922

South Peak 4,708

Tennessee Eiver, at Hardin's. 899

Hill House Mountain, summit road to Montvale

Springs 2,452

Montvale Springs, Tennessee 1,293

Marshall Court-House, Madison County 1,647

Warm Springs, " " 1,325

Bear Wallow Mountain, " " 4,638

Panel Eock Station, Tennessee line 1,264

NANTEHALEH MOUNTAINS.

Franklin Court-House, Macon County 2,241

Burning Town Bald, " " 5,103

Eocky Bald, " " 5,822

Toketah, " " 5,373

Wayah, " " 5,492

Albert, " " 5,254

Pickens's Nose, " " 4,910

172 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

FEET.

Henderson ville Court-House, Henderson County.. 2,167
Bear Wallow Mountain, " " 4,233

Bear Wallow Gap, " " 3,465

Bald Mountain (or Pinnacle), " *' 3,834

Miller Mountain, " " 3,889

Sugarloaf Mountain, « " 3,973

Columbus Court-House, Polk County 1,145

Tryon Mountain, " « 3,237

Tryon Station, « " 764

Brevard Court-House, Transylvania County 2,195

Hymen's Knob, " " 6,084

Devil's Court-House, " " 6,049

Cassar's Head, South Carolina 3,223

Pinnacle, " " • 5,555

Hayesville Court-House, Clay County

Tusquitta Bald, " " 5,314

Medlock Bald, " « 5,258

Standing Indian (Mountain) " " 5,495

Chunky Gal " " « 4,985

Eobinsville Court-House, Graham County

Joanna Bald, . « " 4,743

McDaniel Bald, " « ....r. 4,653

Tatham's Gap, " « 3,639

Cheowah, maximum, " " 4,996

Murphy Court-House, Cherokee County 1,614

Winfrey Gap, « " 3,493

Peak, « « 3,937

Knoahetah Mountain " « 4,498

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 173

FEET.

Highest summit east of the Mississippi, Mitchell's

Peak, in North Carolina 6,707

Highest mountain in New England, Mount Wash-
ington, in New Hampshire 6,286

Difference 421

Among the peaks jointly possessed by Western North
Carolina and East Tennessee there are twenty-three
which surpass Mount Washington in height. In ad-
dition to these, there are twenty-three other mountains
which exceed six thousand feet, but fall short of Mount
Washington ; and there are still seventy-nine others
which exceed five thousand feet, many of them closely
approximating six thousand.

Area of North Carolina, 52,286 square miles.

Land surface, 48,666 square miles.

Water surface, 3,620 square miles.

Northern boundary, eastern end, lat. 36° 33' 15''.

Easternmost point, Chlckamicomico, long. 75° 27' 12".

Southernmost point. Smith's Island, lat. 33° 49' 55".

Western boundary, long. 18° 42' 20".

Extreme length, 503^ miles.

Extreme breadth, 187^ miles.

Length of coast line, 314 miles.

Latitude of Ealeigh, 35° 47'.

Longitude of Ealeigh, 78° 38' 5".

Longitude of Ealeigh, from Washington, 1° 37' 57".

Altitude of Ealeigh, 365 feet.

Average elevation of State, 640 feet.

Population, in 1890, 1,617,947.

Number of counties, 96.

15*

174 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

MAGNETIC NEEDLE.

The variation in 1875 (and 1825) was 3° west in Curri-
tuck ; 3° east in Cherokee.

The zero left Eoanoke Island, its eastern limit, in
1790 ; passed Newbern in 1850, Ealeigh in 1870, Fay-
etteville in 1875, Greensboro in 1880.

The variation increases west 3 J minutes a year.
Direction of magnetic meridian N. 23° W. Motion west
five miles a year.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 175

CHAPTEE IX.

A CONDENSED MEMOIR OF REV. ELISHA
MITCHELL, D.D.

Elisha Mitchell, D.D., was born in Wash-
ington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, on the
19th of August, 1793.

He graduated at Yale College in 1813, was
appointed to the chair of mathematics in the
University of North Carolina in 1817, and, after
rendering thirty-nine and a half years of the
most valuable service in the scientific depart-
ments of that institution, he perished the 27th of
June, 1857, in the sixty-fourth year of his age,
and was buried in Asheville the 10th of the
following July. " But at the earnest solicitation
of many friends, and especially of the mountain
men of Yancey, his family allowed his body to
be removed and deposited on the top of Mt.
Mitchell. This was done on the 16th of June,
1858. There he shall rest till the judgment

176 TEE BALSAM GROVES OF

day in a mausoleum such as no other man has
ever had. Keared by the hands of Omnipo-
tence, it was assigned to him by those to whom
it was given thus to express their esteem, and it
was consecrated by the lips of eloquence warmed
by affection, amidst the rites of our holy re-
ligion. Before him lies the North Carolina he
loved so well and served so faithfully. From
his lofty couch its hills and valleys melt into its
plains as they stretch away to the shores of the
eastern ocean, whence the dawn of the last day
stealing quietly westward, as it lights the moun-
tain-tops first, shall awake him earliest to hear
the greeting of

* Well done, good and faithful servant J "

THE SEARCH FOR PROFESSOR MITCHELl's BODY.

(From the Asheville Spectator.)

Messrs. Editors, — Having spent a week at the scene
of this memorable calamity, in search of the body of Dr.
Mitchell, and assisting in its removal after it was found, I
have been requested by sundry citizens to give to the
public a sketch of the deplorable event. In accord-
ance with their request, I now take my pen to give you
all I know of the accident, which has caused so much
sorrowful excitement in this region, and which I doubt
not will unnerve the public feeling to its centre through-
out the State when the sad tidings shall be generally
known.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 177

It is known to all who have felt interested in our
State geography, that there lately sprung up a dispute
between the Hon. T. L. Clingman and Dr. Mitchell, in
regard to one of the high peaks of the Black Mountain
put down in Cook's map as Mt. Clingman. The former
alleging that he was first to measure and ascertain its
superior height to any other point on the range, and
the latter gentleman asserting that he was on that same
peak and measured it in the year 1844. After several
letters, pro and con, through the newspapers, Dr. Mit-
chell announced last fall his intention of visiting the
mountains again for the purpose of remeasuring the
peak in dispute, taking the statements of some gentle-
men who had acted as his guides on his former visits,
etc. Sometime since, about the middle of June, I think,
he came up, in company with his son Chas. A. Mitchell,
his daughter, and a servant boy, established his head-
quarters at Jesse Stepp's, at the foot of the mountain,
and began the laborious task of ascertaining the height
of the highest peak by an instrumental survey, which,
as the former admeasurements were only barometrical,
would fix its altitude with perfect accuracy. He had
proceeded with his work near two weeks, and had
reached to some quarter of a mile above Mr. Wm. Pat-
ton's Mountain House, by Saturday evening, half-past
two o'clock, the 27th of June, at which time he quit
work and told his son that he was going to cross the
mountain to the settlement on Caney Eiver for the pur-
pose of seeing Mr. Thomas Wilson, Wm. Kiddle, and I
believe another Mr. Wilson, who had guided him up to
the top on a former visit. He promised to return to
the Mountain House on Monday at noon. There was
no one with him. This was the last time he was ever
seen alive. On Monday his son repaired to the Moun-
m

178 THE BALSAM GUOVES OF

tain House to meet liis father, but he did not come.
Tuesday the same thing occurred, and though consider-
able uneasiness was felt for his safety, yet there were
so many ways to account for his delay that it was
scarcely thought necessary to alarm the neighborhood ;
but when "Wednesday night came and brought no token
of him, his son and Mr. John Stepp immediately started
on Thursday morning to Caney River in search of him.
On arriving at Mr. Thos. Wilson's, what was their aston-
ishment and dismay to learn that he had neither been
seen nor heard of in that settlement ! They immediately
returned to Mr. Stepps, the alarm was given, and before
sundown on Friday evening companies of the hardy
mountaineers from the North Fork of the Swannanoa
were on their way up the mountain. The writer, hap-
pening to be present on a visit to the Black, joined the
first company that went up. About eighteen persons
camped at the Mountain House that evening, and con-
tinued accessions were made to our party during the
night, by the good citizens of that neighborhood, who
turned out at the call of humanity as fast as they heard
the alarm, some from their fields, some from working
on the road, and all without a moment's hesitation.
Early on Saturday morning our party under the com-
mand of Mr. Fred. Burnett and his sons, all experienced
hunters, and Jesse Stepp and others who were familiar
with the mountains, struck out for the main top, and
began the search by scouring the woods on the left
hand or Canej' River side of the trail that runs along
the top. We continued on this way to the highest peak
without discovering any traces whatever of his passage,
when our company became so scattered into small par-
ties that no further systematic search couid be made
that day. But directly in our rear as we came up the

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 179

mountain was Mr. Eld ridge Burnett with some more of
his neighbors, who had come from their houses that
morning; and hearing a report that Dr. Mitchell had
expressed his intention of striking a bee-line from the
top for the settements without following the blazed trail
way to Caney River, they searched for signs in that
direction, and soon found a trail in the soft moss and
fern that was believed to have been made by him, and
followed it until it came to the first fork of Caney,
where it was lost. Nothing doubting but they were on
his track, and that he had continued down the stream,
they went several miles along the beat of the river,
over inconceivably rough and dangerous ground, until
dark, when they threw themselves upon the earth and
rested till morning. Mr. Stepp, Mr. Fred. Burnett and
others made their way to Wilson's on Caney River to
join the company that was coming up from the Yancey
side, and the writer and many others returned, gloomy
and disappointed to the Mountain House. Thus ended
the first day's search. During almost the entire day
the rain had poured down steadily, the air was cold and
chilling, the thermometer indicating about forty-four
degrees at noon, whilst the heavy clouds wrapped the
whole mountain in such a dense fog that it was impos-
sible to see any distance before us. It seemed as if the
genii of those vast mountain solitudes were angered at
our unwonted intrusion, and had invoked the Storm-
God to enshroud in deeper gloom the sad and mysterious
fate of their noble victim.

Sabbath morning came, but its holy stillness and sa-
cred associations were all unregarded, and the party
camping in the Mountain House, now largely augmented
by constant arrivals from the settlements, plunged again
into the gloomy forest of gigantic firs, and filing through

180 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

the dark and deep gorges struck far down into the wilds
of Caney Elver. Mr. Eldridge Burnett's party returned
about two o'clock, bringing no tidings and seeing no
further trace whatever of the wanderer's footsteps.
Still later in the dav Messrs. Fred. Burnett and Jesse
Stepp and party returned with some twelve or fifteen
of the citizens of Caney Eiver, having traversed a large
scope of country and finding still no trace of the lost
one. The rain still continued to pour down, and the
gloomy and ill-omened fog still continued to wrap the
mountain's brow in its rayless and opaque shroud. Just
before dark the remaining party came in, unsuccessful,
tired, hungry, and soaking with water. A general gloom
now overspread the countenances of all, as the awful
and almost undeniable fact was proclaimed that Dr.
Mitchell was surely dead, and our only object in making
the search would be to rescue his mortal remains from
the wild beasts and give them Christian sepulture! Jt
could not be possible, we thought, that he was alive, for
cold, and hunger, and fatigue, if nothing worse had
happened to him, would ere this have destroyed him.
Alas! we reasoned too well. By this time the alarm
had spread far and near, and many citizens of Asheville
and other parts of the country were flocking to the
mountains to assist in the search for one so universally
beloved and respected. On Monday the company num-
bered some sixty men. New routes were projected, new
ground of search proposed, and the hunt conducted
throughout the day with renewed energy and determi-
nation, but still without avail. On Tuesday the com-
pany of Buncombe men separated into three squads
and took different routes, whilst Mr. Thomas Wilson
and his neighbors from Caney Eiver, took a still more
distant route, by going to the top of the highest peak

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 181

and searchirifi: down towards the Cat-tail fork of the
river. They were led to take this route by the sugges-
tion of Mr. Wilson, that Dr. jVIitchell had gone up that
way in his visit to the high peak in 1844, and that per-
haps be had undertaken to go down by the same route.
They accordinglj' struck out for that point, and turning
to the left to strike down the mountain in the prairie
near the top, at the very spot where it is alleged that
the Doctor entered it thirteen years ago, they instantly
perceived the impression of feet upon the yielding turf,
pointing down the mountain in the direction indicated
of his former route. After tracing it some distance with
that unerring woodcraft which is so wonderful to all
but the close observing hunter, they became convinced
that it was his trail and sent a messenger back some
five miles to inform the Buncombe men, and telling them
to hurry on as fast as they could. The writer wiih Mr.
Charles Mitchell and many others were in a deep valley
on the head-waters of another fork of the river, when
the blast of a horn and the firing of guns on a distant
peak, made us aware that some discovery was made.
Hurrying with breathless haste up the steep mountain
side in the direction of the guns we soon came up and
found the greater part of our company watching for us,
with the news that the Yancey company were upon the
trail we had been so earnestly seeking so many days.
After a brief consultation, two or three of our party
returned to the Mountain House for provisions, and the
balance of us started as fast as we could travel along the
main top towards our Yancey friends, and reached the
high peak just before dark. Here we camped in a small
cabin built by Mr. Jesse Stepp, ate a hasty supper and
threw ourselves upon the floor, without covering, to

rest.

16

182 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

About one o'clock in the night, just as the writer was
about closing his eyes in troubled and uneasy slumber,
a loud halloo was heard from the high bluif that loomg
over the cabin.- It was answered from within, and in a
moment every sleeper was upon his feet. Mr. Jesse
Stepp, Capt. Eobert Patton and others, then came down
and told us that the body was found. Mournfully then
indeed those hardy sons of the mountain seated them-
selves around the smouldering cabin-fire, and on the
trunks of the fallen firs, and then, in the light of a
glorious full moon, whose rays pencilled the dark damp
forest with liquid silver, seven thousand feet above the
tide-washed sands of the Atlantic, the melancholy tale
was told. Many a heart was stilled with sadness as the
awful truth was disclosed, and many a rough face glit-
tered with a tear in the refulgent moonlight as it looked
upon the marble pallor and statue-stillness of the stricken
and bereaved son, and thought of those far away whom
this sudden evil would so deeply afflict.

It was as they expected. The deceased had under-
taken to go the same route to the settlements which he
had formerly gone. They traced him rapidly down
the precipices of the mountain, until they reached the
stream (the Cat-tail fork), found his traces going down
it — following on a hundred yards or so, they came to a
rushing cataract some forty feet high, saw his footprints
trying to climb around the edge of the yawning preci-
pice, saw the moss torn up by the outstretched hand,
and then — the solid, impressionless granite refused to
tell more of his fate. But clambering hastily to the
bottom of the roaring abyss, they found a basin worn
out of the solid rock by the frenzied torrent, at least
fourteen feet deep, filled with clear and crystal waters
cold and pure as the winter snow that generates them.

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN, 183

At the bottom of this basin, quietly reposing, with out-
stretched arms, lay the mortal remains of the Eov.
Elisha Mitchell, D.D., the good, the great, the wise, the
simple-minded, the pure of heart, the instructor of
youth, the disciple of knowledge and the preacher of
Christianity I Oh what friend to science and virtue,
what youth among all the thousands that have listened
to his teachings, what friend that has ever taken him
by the hand, can think of this wild and awful scene
unmoved by the humanity of tears ! can think of those
gigantic pyramidal firs, whose interlocking branches
shut out the light of heaven, the many-hued rhododen-
drons that freight the air with their perfume and lean
weepingly over the waters, that crystal stream leaping
down the great granites and hastening from the majestic
presence of the mighty peak above, whilst in the deep
pool below, where the weary waters rest but a single
moment, lies the inanimate body of his dear friend and
preceptor, apparently listening to the mighty requiem
of the cataract! Truly "Man knoweth not his time,
and the sons of men are entrapped in the evil, when it
cometh suddenly upon them."

Upon consultation it was thought best to let the body
remain in the water until all arrangements were com-
pleted for its removal and interment ; judging rightly
that the cold and pure waters would better preserve it,
than it could be kept in any other way. At daylight a
number of hands went to cutting out a trail from the
top of the mountain to where the body lay, a distance
of three miles, whilst others went -to Asheville to make
the necessary arrangements. Word was also sent to the
coroner of Yancey, and to the citizens generally to come
and assist us in raising the body on Wednesday morning.
At that time a large number of persons assembled at

184 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Mr. Jesse Stepp's and set out for the spot, bearing the
coflSn upon our shoulders up the dreary steeps. We
had gone near ten miles in this way and had just turned
down from the high peak towards the river, when we
were met by Mr. Coroner Ayers, and about fifty of the
citizens of Yancey, coming up with the body. They
had got impatient at our delay, and enveloping the body
in a sheet and fastening it securely upon a long pole,
laid it upon the shoulders of ten men and started up the
mountain. And now became manifest the strenscth and
hardihood of those noble mountaineers. For three miles
above them the precipitous granites and steep mountain
sides forbade almost the ascent of an unincumbered man,
which was rendered doubly difficult by great trunks of
trees, and the thick and tangled laurel which blocked
up the way. The load was near two hundred and fifty
pounds and only two men could carry at once. But
nothing daunted by the fearful exertion before them,
they step boldly up the way, fresh hands stepped in
every few moments, all struggling without intermission
and eager to assist in the work of humanity. Anon
they would come to a place at which it was impossible
for the bearers to proceed, and then they would form a
line by taking each other's hands, the uppermost man
grasping a tree and with shouts of encouragement heave
up by main strength. In this way, after indescribably
toiling for some hours, they reached the spot. Here was
aiforded another instance of the great affection and re-
gard in which the deceased was held by all. These bold
and hardy men desired to have the body buried there,
and contended for it long and earnestly. The}- said
that he had first made known the superior height of
their glorious mountain and noised their fame almost
throughout the Union, that he had died whilst contend-

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 185

ing for his right to that loftiest of all the Atlantic moun-
tains, on which we then stood, and they desired to place
his remains right there, and at no other spot. It would
indeed have been an appropriate resting-place for him,
and greatly was it wished for by the whole country,
before its being told them that his family wanted his
remains brought down. The}^ reluctantly yielded, and
the Buncombe men proceeded to bring the body slowly
down the valley of the Swannanoa. Before leaving the
top, the writer took down the names of all present, and
will ask you to publish them to the world, as men who
have done honor to our common humanity by their
generous and disinterested conduct on this melancholy
occasion. I am no flatterer, Messrs. Editors, but I must
confess that the labor which these mountain men ex-
pended and the sacrifice they so willingly and cheerfully
made, is worthy of all praise and admiration. May God
reward their kindness. I feel sure, the numerous friends
and pupils of the dear deceased would rather read the
list of these men's names than the " ayes and nays" of
any Congressional vote that has been recorded in many
a day.

FROM YANCEY.

Nathaniel B. Eay, I. M. Broyles, Joseph Shephard,
Washington Broyles, Henry Wheeler, Thomas Wilson,
Jas. M. Eay, D. W. Burleson, G-. B. Silvers, J. O. Griffith,
E. Williams, A. D. Allen, A. L. Eay, Thomas D. Wilson,
E. A. Pyatt, D. W. Howard, W. M. Astin, James H.
Eiddle, Dr. W. Crumley, G. D. Eay, Burton Austin,
James Allen, Henry Eay, T. L. Eandolph, John Mc-
Peters, W. B. Creasman, S. J. Nanney, Samuel Eay, E.
W. Boren, Eev. W. C. Bowman, J. W. Bailey, Thomas
Silvers, Jr., Thomas Calloway, Henry Allen, J. L. Gibbs,

16*

186 THE BALSAM GROVES OF

Jesse Eay, James Hensley, Eobert Eiddle, W. D. Wil-
liams, J. D. Young, William Eolen, G-. W. Wilson, John
Eogers, James Allen, Jr., J. W. Ayres, J. F. Presnell,
E. A. Eumple, W. J. Hensley, D. H. Silvers, E. Don
Wilson, Jas. Calloway.

FROM BUNCOMBE.

S. C. Lambert, William Burnett, E. H. Burnett, E. J.
Fortune, Ephraim Glass, J. H. Bartlett, B. F. Fortune,
A. !N". Alexander, James Gaines, J. E. Ellison, John F.
Bartlett, F. F. Bartlett, Elijah Kearly, E. Clayton, A.
Burgin, Jesse Stepp, D. F. Summey, T. J. Corpning,
Harris Ellison, T. B. Boyd, A. J. Linsdey, Joshua Stepp,
William Powers, E. P. Lambert, Tisdale Stepp, Daniel
Burnett, Thaddeus C. Coleman, A. F. Harris, W. C. For-
tune, Fletcher Fortune, Capt. Eobert Patton, Cooper,
servant of Wm. Patton, John, servant of Fletcher For-
tune, Esq.

A. J. Emerson, Chatham County, A. E. Ehodes, Jones
County, H. H. Young, and Moses Dent, Franklin County ;
all students of Wake Forest College.

This list does not comprise all who assisted in the
search, as, much to my regret, I did not take a list of
any but those present at the removal of the body. I
believe, however, that the names of all are recorded
on the register of Mr. Patton's Mountain House,
where the friends of Dr. Mitchell can see them when
they visit (as I have no doubt many will) the scene of
his death.

This ends my brief sketch of this melancholy aifair.
As to my eulogy upon Dr. Mitchell's character I feel
myself unequal to the task. I trust that it will be ap-
propriately pronounced by some one of his learned and

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. 187

devoted fellow laborers of the University. My feeble
pen could add nothing to his moral and intellectual
stature. I will only say that I loved him as sincerely
as any one in the State. I am gratified to be able to
state that unusual kindness and respect was exhibited
by every citizen of the country throughout the whole
transaction.

Yours truly,

Z. B. Yance.

THE END.

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cost.

I^ourtll. — What Highlands Nursery Grows : —

Deciduous and Evergreen Trees, Flowering Shrubs, Her-
baceous Perennials, Vines, Orchids, Ferns, Aquatics;
Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Kalmias, Dogwoods, Stuartias,
Hollies, Magnolias, Maples, Chionanthus, Hypericums,
Yuccas, Shortia, Dicentras, Trilliums, Clematis, Sarrace-
nias, etc., etc.

Kifltli. — Catalogues Free. Descriptive Retail,

Wholesale, and Special Offers for large Planters. Liberal
Discounts. Write us for any information.

Sixtli. — Don't neglect writing us at once. Visit-
ors at Linville are cordially invited to inspect the Nursery,
where we take pleasure in showing you our large collection of
plants.

•••

LINVILLE,

North Carolina.

ESEEOLA INN,

In the heart of the beautiful Grandfather Mountain region, 3807

feet above sea, has

PERFECT APPOINTMENTS,
EXCELLENT TABLE,

OPEN FIRES,

TELEPHONE, AND

DAILY MAILS.

On its grounds, removed from the Inn, are

TENNIS AND ARCHERY COURTS,

BILLIARDS AND BOWLING,

AND

A CHILDREN'S PLAY-ROOM.

NOBLE ROADS penetrate for many miles, unrivalled scenery,
and rugged mountain climbs invite the more venturesome.

Here, added to delightful coolness, is freedom from mosquitoes
and black-flies. TROUT in all the streams.

A PLENTIFUL LIVERY.

TERIvIS ^4:ODERAXEJ.

For Illustrated Circular, address

E. P. HOLCOMBE, Secretary,

LiNviLLE, Mitchell County, N. C.

(See illustration facing page 122.)

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